Exceptions to NEISS coding guide?

Unsupervised Wisdom
1

Hello,

Our team would like to confirm on the following:

Q1) Is it true that exceptions may happen as the NEISS coding manual* may not be strictly followed by every coder?

For instance, “Repeat visits for the same event” should not be reported, p.5 of the manual.

Q2) Has it been confirmed, e.g. by the way of cohort extraction, that two different case numbers (cpsc_case_number) will not be derived from the same person?

Q2b) Exception: a patient fell twice on two different occasions will lead to two separate entries?

Q3) Patient who admitted to hospitals multiple times due to the same fall in theory would not result in two separate entries/ rows?

Thanks a lot!

*https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/2023NEISSCPSCCodingManualfinal.pdf?VersionId=hdWvCZ5hjCqMugBF3xLJMLM3ewXYTMrH

2

Thanks for writing in!

  1. That is correct. NEISS records are manually extracted from ED records and it’s possible that the coding manual is not adhered to perfectly. You are correct that repeat visits for the same fall event should not appear multiple times in the NEISS data (but may).

  2. Case numbers should be unique to person-event pairings. So, yes, a person could fall two different times and come to the ED of a NEISS hospital two different times resulting in two different records with two different case numbers.

  3. A patient who comes to the ED (doesn’t necessarily have to be admitted to the hospital) multiple times for the same fall should not be represented by two separate records, that is correct.