Hello friends,
Based on some recent forum posts, here and here, I’m curious who uses HCPCS codes to create records in Visit Occurrence or Visit Detail table?
Those of us with EHR data use our source encounter/visit records because they contain most or all the attributes of a visit (start_datetime, end_date, end_datetime, provider, care site, admitted from, discharged to). The HCPCS only provides a person, date and usually a provider. Therefore, we choose to use the source encounter/visit records over the anemic HCPCS records.
Does anyone use the HCPCS records to create visits? I’ve never seen a post on the forum asking for these records to be moved into the visit domain, so they can be used to create visit records. But I also don’t read every forum post. If no one has requested this change or uses these records in this way, then maybe we should just leave them in the Observation domain where they have existed for many years since these codes identify the way to charge for a visit more than actually representing the visit itself. By moving them to the Visit domain, everyone needs to update their ETL or the records won’t be in the CDM. Which is fine if folks aren’t using them.