Can hospital discharge diagnoses be used for intensive care unit administrative and quality management functions?
The primary discharge diagnosis often failed to reflect the reason for ICU admission, making it impossible to consistently establish the reason for ICU admission from the discharge data. The reason for ICU admission was also frequently not included among the secondary discharge diagnoses. Administrative data are therefore not useful for ICU quality management and other functions. Intensivists need to establish their own databases.
In this population, there were no significant differences in outcomes after OHCAs that occurred during national meetings of professional organizations related to OHCA care and those that occurred during non-meeting days.