Acquired Diagnosis / Complication
For other types of diagnoses, see Admit Diagnosis and Comorbid Diagnosis.
Acquired Diagnoses, also referred to as complications, are the most significant problems, surgical procedures or diagnostic procedures that happen to a patient AFTER unit admission.
- Question: If a procedure is done in ER after the pt has been accepted to medicine (admit time), do we put the procedure as an admit code or a complication?--LKolesar 10:26, 2014 October 23 (CDT)
- I have always put the procedures that pt had prior to arrival to the unit in the admit code.I have done it this way even if they were accepted to medicine or ICU-GHall 17:36, 2014 October 24 (CDT)
Acquired diagnoses are coded "in order of occurrence" on a ward/unit.
Acquired diagnoses do not refer to diagnoses that have been discovered after the patient comes to the unit if it is likely that the patient was admitted to ward with the problem in the first place but it took a few days to figure that out.
- We don't repeat the diagnosis in the acquired section. For example if the admit diagnosis is CHF they get treated but relapse back into CHF we do not add that as a acquired complication. Exceptions:
- For procedures we can repeat them once as a complication. For example if the patient came in with a scope in the admit and then had 3 more scopes in the hospital you would enter it once as an acquired
- the same type of infection that was present on admission but with a different pathogen.
Significant Complications
Data Structure
Acquired Diagnoses are drawn from S_AllDiagnoses and stored in L_Dxs.