Breaking ICD Codes: Identifying Ambiguous Respiratory Infection Codes via Regional Diagnosis Heterogeneity.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

We aimed to analyze regional variations in the assignment of International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) codes to acute respiratory infections, seeking to identify notable anomalies that suggest diverse diagnoses of the same condition.

Methods

We analyzed national weekly diagnosis data for acute respiratory infections (ICD-10 codes J00-J22) in Poland from 2010 to 2019, covering all 380 county-equivalent administrative regions and encompassing 292 million consultations. Data were aggregated into age brackets. We calculated the Kendall tau correlations between shares of particular diagnoses.

Results

We found staggering differences across regions in applied diagnoses that persisted even after disaggregating the data into age groups. Th

SUBMITTER: Walkowiak MP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11772040 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature