>>> just imagine standardizing every diagnosis >> That typically leads to either bad statistics or disimproved care. > Can I ask why?
It of course depends on the suitability of the standardization process (as in the applicability of a coding system to the domain - medically and in purpose). It is a problem of up-/downcoding. Standardizing typically needs classifying, the classes of which are either to fine-grained (doctors will pick a diagnoses which seems somewhat similar to what they think it might be, thereby falsifying the apparent accuracy of statistics based on the coding system), or too coarse (the picked diagnosis will be overly broad, thusly not reflecting reality "enough"). I guess what I am saying is that one cannot expect to "just standardize" diagnoses and hope to meaningfully draw conclusions from that post hoc. The standardization process needs to be tied to the question that is going to be asked of the standardized data. Karsten _______________________________________________ openEHR-technical mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org
