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Mapping Oncology Encounter data to VISIT_OCCURRENCE - visit concept granularity

[First a forum meta-comment: it is not clear from the forum descriptions whether mapping questions belong in Implementers or CDM Builders. People seem to ask ETL questions both.]

We are in the guts of analyzing our EHR data for mapping and working on encounters. Our care is delivered 99% in the outpatient setting with a very small inpatient component. We have the following types of ambulatory encounters:

ENCOUNTER_CATEGORY ENCOUNTER_TYPE_DSC
Ambulatory Encounter Office Visit
Ambulatory Encounter Appointment
Ambulatory Encounter Blood Draw
Ambulatory Encounter Infusion
Ambulatory Encounter Hospital Encounter
Ambulatory Encounter Ancillary Procedure
Ambulatory Encounter Nurse Only
Ambulatory Encounter Telemedicine
Ambulatory Encounter Social Work
Ambulatory Encounter Telemedicine - audio only
Ambulatory Encounter Nutrition
Ambulatory Encounter Treatment
Ambulatory Encounter Procedure visit
Ambulatory Encounter Immunization
Ambulatory Encounter Evaluation

The VISIT-OCCURRENCE documentation seems to say these would all get the visit_concept_id of Outpatient Visit.

Some of these encounter types are important to oncology research. Nutrition and social work visits can indicate adverse events during treatment. Infusion and blood draw visits are also important. But there are no standard concepts in the Visit domain for these encounter types. (there’s a poor match for Infusion 38004228). Should we care about this at the VISIT_OCCURRENCE level, or do we map everything to Outpatient Visit and that detail lives at the procedure level?

@jmethot:

That is a classic list EHRs have for their “encounters”. It doesn’t work well:

  1. These concepts are not of the same kind, they are disparate or orthogonal. For example, “Nurse only” could also be “Infusion”.
  2. We define a Visit as a configuration of healthcare, which means who is coming to whom, does the patient stay in bed or retain control, is the service level 24 hours or on demand. It is not about what happens during the encounter (infusion, blood draw, procedure). That is Procedure or Drug Exposure.

Long story short: Yes, all of these seem to be Outpatient Visits, except “Hospital encounter”, which is inpatient.

Not true. Hospital encounters can be inpatient or outpatient. The term “hospital encounter” is another combination of of a care site and a visit. And many hospitals also provide outpatient care (imaging, lab, clinic visits, same day surgery, etc.). Determining the difference between outpatient visit and inpatient visit is much more complex than mapping an encounter type to IP or OP. The Healthcare System Interest Group will cover this along with other EHR specific topics during a 4 hour interactive lecture at the Symposium this fall. I will make a formal announcement soon.

The Visit domain is a little messy in its current form. Therefore,I have started another discussion here. Please join!

t