Accuracy of external cause-of-injury coding in hospital records.
OBJECTIVE
To appraise the published evidence regarding the accuracy of external cause-of-injury codes in hospital records.


METHODS
Systematic review.


METHODS
Electronic databases searched included PubMed, PubMed Central, Medline, CINAHL, Academic Search Elite, Proquest Health and Medical Complete, and Google Scholar. Snowballing strategies were used by searching the bibliographies of retrieved references to identify relevant associated articles.


METHODS
Studies were included in the review if they assessed the accuracy of external cause-of-injury coding in hospital records via a recoding methodology.


METHODS
The papers identified through the search were independently screened by two authors for inclusion. Because of heterogeneity between studies, meta-analysis was not performed.


RESULTS
Very limited research on the accuracy of external cause coding for injury-related hospitalisation using medical record review and recoding methodologies has been conducted, with only five studies matching the selection criteria. The accuracy of external cause coding using ICD-9-CM ranged from approximately 64% when exact code agreement was examined to approximately 85% when agreement for broader groups of codes was examined.


CONCLUSIONS
Although broad external cause groupings coded in ICD-9-CM can be used with some confidence, researchers should exercise caution for very specific codes until further research is conducted to validate these data. As all previous studies have been conducted using ICD-9-CM, research is needed to quantify the accuracy of coding using ICD-10-AM, and validate the use of these data for injury surveillance purposes.
McKenzie
K
K
National Centre for Classification in Health, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. k.mckenzie@qut.edu.au
Enraght-Moony
E L
EL
Walker
S M
SM
McClure
R J
RJ
Harrison
J E
JE
D005568:Forms and Records Control / Q000592:standards*; D006753:Hospital Records / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D015601:Injury Severity Score; D008499:Medical Records / Q000592:standards*; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000145:classification / Q000209:etiology*