Southern medical journal
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Southern medical journal · Nov 2022
ReviewTrends in ICD-10-CM-Coded Administrative Datasets for Injury Surveillance and Research.
Accurate injury surveillance depends on data quality in administrative datasets created for billing and reimbursement. Significant effort has been devoted to testing the ability of candidate injury case definitions to identify injury cases accurately in these datasets. We used interviews with experienced coders, informed by a review of the current literature, to identify three clinical coding trends that may affect the consistency of surveillance data: "clinical documentation improvement or clinical documentation integrity" (CDI), coding by treating clinicians, and certain electronic health record features. ⋯ Injury surveillance relies on billing and reimbursement records. Financial motivations may interfere with the consistency of surveillance findings and mislead injury epidemiologists. Further investigation is essential to ensure the integrity of surveillance findings.