Are the All-Patient Refined Diagnosis-Related Groups (APR-DRGs) necessary for risk adjustment in the Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQIs)?
The APR-DRGs are used to risk-adjust the IQIs for patient clinical condition and severity of illness or risk of mortality. If the patient APR-DRG is not available, the software will risk-adjust using information on age and gender only, which is less desirable than using the APR-DRGs. Although the AHRQ QIs program modules are free, the APR-DRGs is a commercially licensed software package that may be obtained from the 3M Corporation. The 3M Corporation did not have any affiliation with development of the AHRQ QIs. Future versions of the AHRQ QIs software may incorporate alternative clinical classification systems.
