January 27, 2011
It s common for investigators to use administrative data to measure and track rates of MRSA infection, but is an administrative database an accurate source for this kind of information? A new paper co-authored by several CDDEP researchers says no instead, administrative data may be misleading when it comes to infection surveillance.
The study, published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, looks specifically at the code for infection with a drug-resistant organism (the V09 code) within ICD-9-CM coding system.
Assignment of the V09 code was measured against MRSA-positive cultures from 3 different hospitals. The researchers found that nearly 50% of patients who were assigned the V09 code had no record of MRSA infection in the present or previous hospital visit. The correlation rate between the code and a MRSA-positive culture was low enough for the study to assert that in its current state the V09 code should not be used to track trends in MRSA prevalence.
Why the discrepancy between administrative codes and MRSA rates? One problem the study authors point to is that the V09 code is primarily for billing and reimbursement purposes, not for surveillance, and so must be interpreted within that context.
Instead, the authors recommend using other dedicated surveillance sources to track infection rates, the gold standard being the CDC s Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs) network.
Learn more about using caution in interpreting administrative codes from lead author Dr. Marin L. Schweizer, in her guest post on the Extending the Cure blog.
