Medical care
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This report describes the development and validation of a computerized system for converting ICD-9CM rubrics to Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) scores. In collaboration with the Committee on Injury Scaling of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, AIS-85 scores were assigned to 2,062 injury-related ICD-9CM rubrics. To validate the conversion table, AIS and Injury Severity Scores (ISS), derived using the conversion, were compared with those obtained by reviewing the complete medical record for 1,120 trauma cases. ⋯ Grouped ISS scores agree, on average, 75% of the time. The results show that while the computerized conversion is not perfect, it provides reasonably good information on severity that might otherwise be unavailable for large population-based research and evaluation. This paper discusses the potential applications of the conversion table with specific attention to its use in evaluating the extent of trauma care regionalization.