What percentage of procedures is performed in high-volume hospitals?
Americans had 35 million hospital stays in 1997, and during most of these stays patients underwent some type of procedure. Procedures are any type of invasive or noninvasive diagnostic or therapeutic interventions that appear on the discharge records of patients who stay in the hospital. Procedures can range from major operations such as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, to diagnostic imaging such as computerized axial tomography (CT) scans, to noninvasive treatments such as alcohol and drug detoxification. There is considerable variation in the thoroughness of coding for minor procedures, such as infusing intravenous antibiotics; so not all of these types of procedures are recorded and presented here. Procedures on discharge records are coded using a classification system called “ICD-9-CM”, which places procedures into about 3,500 different categories. For ease in reporting these statistics, this report uses Clinical Classification Software (CCS). CCS is a clinical grouper
