The authors describe a state-based review of discharge diagnoses to identify medical injuries. They conclude that mortality risk should be taken into account when forming mortality estimates to increase their accuracy.

This cross-sectional study described associations between a medical injury diagnosis and factors such as age, gender, insurance payer status, and hospital characteristics using multivariate techniques. Investigators analyzed more than 550,000 hospital discharges from Wisconsin discharge records data and identified medical injuries based on specific coding criteria. They discovered injury diagnoses in 13.3% of discharge records, with greater risk associated with women and certain hospital characteristics, including non-profit status and percent of board-certified medical staff. The medical injuries studied were limited to those within specific International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) codes with complications after a procedure as the most common type (eg, digestive system complication because of a procedure).