A diagnostic cluster system for skilled nursing facilities.

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Diagnostic cluster systems have been developed to assist in analyzing diagnoses in outpatient and inpatient settings but not in convalescent hospital settings. We developed a diagnostic cluster system for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) designed to include or capture a greater proportion of such diagnoses than a previously established inpatient diagnostic cluster system. METHODS: We tested the ability of the new SNF diagnostic cluster system to code diagnoses on records from SNFs in different geographic areas. Then we compared the proportion of admitting diagnoses captured by the new SNF diagnostic cluster system and by a previously established inpatient system. RESULTS: The new diagnostic cluster system captured between 92% and 96% of admitting diagnoses at the study SNFs. There was no statistically significant difference among the facilities in the proportion of diagnoses captured by the new system. By comparison, the previously established inpatient system captured only 59%-65% of these admitting diagnoses. The new system captured significantly more diagnoses than the previously established inpatient system. CONCLUSIONS: The new SNF diagnostic cluster system can be used to capture and code diagnostic data from SNFs.