ICD-10 Mortality Coding and the NEIS: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The collection and utilisation of mortality data are often hindered by limited access to contextual details of the circumstances surrounding fatal incidents. The National Coroners Information System (NCIS) can provide researchers with access to such information. The NCIS search capabilities have been enhanced by the inclusion of data supplied by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), specifically the ICD-10 Cause of Death code set. A comparative study was conducted to identify consistencies and differences between ABS ICD-10 codes and those that could be generated by utilising the full NCIS record. Discrepancies between the two sets of codes were detected in over 50% of cases, which highlighted the importance of access to complete and timely documentation in the assignment of accurate and detailed cause of death codes.

Reliability of ICD-10 External Cause of Death Codes in the National Coroners Information System

“…Analysis illustrated that independently assigned external cause ICD-10 UCoD codes matched exactly with the ABS assigned codes in 4,397 (70.8%) deaths. The proportion of exact matches for external cause deaths for this study was higher than reported in a previous study (Daking & Dodds 2007), which compared a smaller subset of national data to the 4 th character level. A further 1,293 deaths (20.8%) matched on intent and external cause category but not specificity, 285 (4.6%) on external cause category and specificity but not intent and 190 (3.1%) matched on intent but not external cause category.…”

“…These codes can be used as the primary variable for case identification and/or to validate other case identification methods. Previous studies have shown discrepancies between the ICD-10 codes assigned by the ABS in the NCIS and an independent recode (Daking & Dodds 2007) and between the classification of the NCIS variable Intent -completion (Elnour & Harrison 2009). …”

“…The NCIS entered into a reciprocal data exchange agreement with the ABS to provide ICD-10 Underlying Cause of Death (UCoD) and Multiple Cause of Death (MCoD) codes for all deaths (external and natural cause) in the NCIS (Daking & Dodds 2007 To facilitate data exchange with the NCIS, the ABS developed a data matching process. The NCIS provided a data extract of variables to the ABS; these were then matched against the deceased's given name, surname, date of birth, date of death, age and sex (M. Wood (ABS) 2008, pers.…”

Geographic variation in inquest rates in Australia

“…The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine houses the NCIS and operates a quality assurance programme designed to identify and amend coding errors and to ensure consistent coding across jurisdictions (National Coroners Information System, 2011). Examinations of the quality of the NCIS data suggest it reliably captures information on deaths reportable to coroners (Daking and Dodds, 2007;Driscoll et al, 2003).…”

Factors predicting coroners’ decisions to hold discretionary inquests

“…17 Examinations of the quality of the data in the NCIS suggest that it reliably captures information on reportable deaths. 18,19 This study was approved by the ethics committee at the Department of Justice, Victoria, Australia.…”