High rate of false‐positive postoperative venous thromboembolism identified using hospital ICD‐10 coding. Issue 1 (24th January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bortz, Hadley; Shi, Linda; Chee, Adrian; Tran, Huyen
• Is Part Of: Internal medicine journal. Volume 53:Issue 1(2023)
• Page Start: 126
• Page End: 130
• Publication Date: 2023-01-24
• Subjects: venous thromboembolism -- postoperative -- hospital coding -- ICD‐10; Medicine -- Periodicals; 616
• DOI: 10.1111/imj.15983
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1444-0903

Abstract

Abstract: The Health Roundtable, a national benchmarking body, identified our institution as an outlier with a high number of postoperative venous thromboembolism (VTE) events. We performed a retrospective study to determine the accuracy of hospital coding for the incidence and severity of postoperative VTE. Of 232 patients identified from ICD‐10 coding, 52 (22.4%) were incorrectly coded. Approximately one third ( n = 68) of all VTE were asymptomatic, diagnosed incidentally. Thus, coding data are inherently flawed with inaccuracy and overrepresent the true number of VTE events, with a substantial proportion of limited clinical relevance.