Orienting new clinical coders to the hospital's case mix should be a basic function of the organisation's Coding Service. After much trial and error, Southern Health Coding and Casemix Services has devised an orientation program that brings together, in a structured and logical manner, all the elements a coder needs to know. This article describes the current coding orientation program.
Clinical indicators using routinely collected International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Australian Modification (ICD-10-AM) data offer promise as tools for improvement of quality. The ICD-10-AM is the coding system used by Australian administrators to summarise information from the clinical record to describe a patient's hospital encounter. The use of anaesthesia complications as coded by this system has been proposed by two jurisdictions as a monitor of the quality of anaesthetic services. We undertook a review of cases identified by such indicators in a large tertiary hospital. Our results indicate the anaesthesia indicator dataset proposed by the Victorian and Queensland Health departments appears to have little clinical or quality improvement relevance.
The selection of cohorts from national and state databases in Australia usually relies on patient diagnoses according to International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes and/or Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs). The aim of this study was to select a specific cohort consisting of stroke and transient ischaemic attack (TIA) episodes, thereby allowing the researcher to examine current process of care using State level hospital admissions datasets. Difficulties in accurately selecting the specified cohort were encountered, due to various interpretations of ICD codes and DRGs as well as the placement of codes to DRGs and different classifications used. These difficulties highlighted several issues regarding the relationships between ICD coding and DRGs in stroke and TIA and are the focus of this paper.
This article provides readers with an understanding of the role and scope of Australia's national Coding Standards Advisory Committee (CSAC) and provides an insight into the different perspectives and priorities that the various CSAC members (stakeholders) bring to this committee.
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