> At Mayo Episodes of care start with any billable encounter > with the health system (e.g. clinician visit, lab test, etc.) > and ends when the clinician of primary record says that the > episode is complete. For curable illness this often occurs > after the cure. For chronic illnesses it usually ends when the > patient reaches a steady state or a goal (e.g. Diabetes > Mellitus with a HgA1C < 7.0 mg/dl). For surgeries it may be > after the first post hospital visit. For medical > hospitalizations it is often at the time of discharge. This has > two important implications. One there is one clinician who is > identified as the team leader of record who is charged to > coordinate all of the care from any provider in the health > system. Two, at the end of an episode the clinician is mandated > to sum up the episode and state for the record what are the > final diagnoses for this episode of care.
This is quite telling. Although Mayo certainly appears to be a wee bit larger than my surgery (GnuMed) both are served well by pretty much exactly the same definition of (medical) episode - even though one is in the US while the other is in Germany. Doesn't that indicate something about the validity of the definition ? Karsten -- GPG key ID E4071346 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD 4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346 - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
