Feasibility of Capturing Adverse Events From Insurance Claims Data Using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Codes Coupled to Present on Admission Indicators

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to investigate the feasibility of using administrative data to screen adverse events in Korea. METHODS: We used a diagnosis-related groups claims data set and the information of the checklist of healthcare quality improvement (a part of the value incentive program) to verify adverse events in fiscal year 2018. Adverse events were identified using patient safety indicator (PSI) clusters and a present on admission indicator (POA). The PSIs consisted of 19 clusters representing subcategories of adverse events, such as hospital-acquired infection. Among the adverse events identified using PSI clusters, “POA = N,” which means not present at the time of admission, was only deemed as the case in the final stage. We compared the agreement on the occurrence of adverse events from claims data with a reference standard data set (i.e., checklist of healthcare quality improvement) and presented them by PSI cluster and institution. RESULTS: The cases of global PSI for any adverse event numbered 27,320 (2.32%) among all diagnostic codes in 2018. In terms of institutional distribution, considerable variation was observed throughout the clusters. For example, only 13.2% of institutions (n = 387) reported any global PSI for any adverse event throughout the whole year. The agreement between the reference standard and the claims data was poor, in the range of 2.2% to 10.8%, in 3 types of adverse events. The current claims data system (i.e., diagnostic codes coupled to POA indicators) failed to capture a large majority of adverse events identified using the reference standard. CONCLUSIONS: Our results imply that the coding status of International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, codes and POA indicators should be refined before using them as quality indicators.