Asthma terminology and classification in hospital records

Asthma is a national health priority area in Australia, and there is significant interest in capturing relevant detail about hospitalisations as a result of asthma. A public submission received by the National Centre for Classification in Health from a large teaching hospital in Victoria suggested that current classification terminology in ICD-10-AM did not adequately reflect the terms recorded in clinical inpatient records, and that patterns and severity of asthma better reflected current clinical terminology in Australian hospitals. The purpose of this study was to determine the validity of the public submission and inform future changes to ICD-10-AM. A representative sample of over 3000 asthma records across Australia and New Zealand were extracted, and the asthma terminology documented and codes assigned were recorded and analysed. The study concluded that there was little support for either pattern terminology or the current classification terminology; however, severity of asthma was commonly used in asthma documentation.