Optimizing the Use of Chief Complaint & Diagnosis for Operational Decision Making: An EMR Case Study of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake

Introduction: Data from an electronic medical record (EMR) system can provide valuable insight regarding health consequences in the aftermath of a disaster. In January of 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) deployed medical personnel to Haiti in response to a crippling earthquake. An EMR system was used to record patient encounters in real-time and to provide data for decision support during response activities. Problem: During the Haiti response, HHS monitored the EMR system by recoding diagnoses into seven broad categories. At the conclusion of the response, it was evident that a new diagnosis categorization process was needed to provide a better description of the patient encounters that were seen in the field. After examining the EMRs, researchers determined nearly half of the medical records were missing diagnosis data. The objective of this study was to develop and test a new method of categorization for patient encounters to provide more detailed data for decision making. Methods: A single researcher verified or assigned a new diagnosis for 8,787 EMRs created during the Haiti response. This created a new variable, the Operational Code, which was based on available diagnosis data and chief complaint. Retrospectively, diagnoses recorded in the field and Operational Codes were categorized into eighteen categories based on the ICD-9-CM diagnostic system. Results: Creating an Operational Code variable led to a more robust data set and a clearer depiction emerged of the clinical presentations seen at six HHS clinics set up in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake. The number of records with an associated ICD-9 code increased 106% from 4,261 to 8,787. The most frequent Operational Code categories during the response were: General Symptoms, Signs, and Ill-Defined Conditions (34.2%), Injury and Poisoning (18.9%), Other (14.7%), Respiratory (4.8%), and Musculoskeletal and Connective Tissue (4.8%). Conclusion: The Operational Code methodology provided more detailed data about patient encounters. This methodology could be used in future deployments to improve situational awareness and decision-making capabilities during emergency response operations.