ICD-View: A Technique and Tool to Make the Morbidity Transparent

Abstract

Morbidity and mortality are one of the most frequently used of statistics. It is hard to oversee the whole distribution of cases because the diagnoses spread on too many International Classification of Diseases codes (ICD 10^th version). Usually, in practice, hospital managers are satisfied to study some pre-determined and/or ordered groups of data. ICDview will help to find these groups. The distribution of diagnoses is varying by time, location and several parameters. The ICD codes themselves have a main structure by the organ and kind of disease. Examining the cases by this technique can also show, which ICD classes must be regrouped.

Caseview method bases on the Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs). Somehundred pixels are pictured. The number of elements of the ICD tops more than ten-thousand. Because of this it is problematic to pixelize it, because it is very hard to picture such a big amount of data on one screen.

ICDview uses the same like reference set, as the Caseview does. The ICD main groups are classified in the Caseview’s columns. The groups of these main groups are pictured in these columns, but their order from the midline separating the medical and surgical entities can be determined on several ways. One way is to calculate it by the average prognosticated weight number of the cases at DRG. It can be calculated by the average prognosticated length of stay of the patients in hospital, and other ways too. The cases can be represented by the main diagnosis, the basic diagnosis or any other type of diagnosis, which stays in the background of the current cure.

Examples of use of the method are given.