I. Finding and Using Healthcare Data

16. Identifying Medical Surgical Stays

We have developed a SAS program that uses the bedsection files and outputs a medical-surgical discharge file that is more comparable with non-VA data files (e.g., Medicare’s Medpar or the HCUP data). The program performs a number of functions, such as recalculating length of stay, identifying the highest DRG weight from multiple bedsections, and calculating number of days spent in intensive care (ICU). The SAS code is available upon request.