Coding Geriatric syndromes: How good are we?

Abstract

High quality coding of hospital activity is important because the data is used for resource allocation and measuring performance. There is little information on the quality of coding of admissions of frail older people who have multiple diagnoses, co-morbidities and functional impairment. Presence or absence of four geriatric syndromes and eight medical conditions was noted on case note review (CNR). Discharge summaries (DS) and hospital coding (HC) were reviewed and compared with the CNR. Forty patients had at least one geriatric syndrome noted in the DS; 16 (40.0%) were captured by the HC. Of 57 patients with at least one medical condition noted in the DS, 52 (91.2%) were captured by the HC (p<0.0001 for difference in HC capture rates). We have demonstrated poor capture of information on geriatric syndromes compared to medical conditions in discharge summaries and hospital coding and propose a problem list bookmark approach to improve this.