ICD-10 and SAS 5.0

ICD-10 and SAS 5.0

SAS QI 5.0 Coming Soon and Release of ICD-10 Alpha Software 

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is pleased to announce two upcoming releases of interest to the AHRQ Quality Indicators (AHRQ QI) users 

1. SAS QI, version 5.0, will be released on March 31, 2015! Some of the noteworthy upgrades include:

• Updates to risk-adjustment models to use 2012 reference population data.
• New Quality Indicators benchmark data tables have been created based on the discharges from an aggregation of the 2012 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) State Inpatient Databases (SID) from 45 States. New risk adjustment models were derived for all indicators in Version5.0 (SAS) of the QI software, based on the discharges from an aggregation of the 2012 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) State  Inpatient Databases (SID) from 45 States.
• Modifications to the technical specifications for 8 IQI, 2 PQI, 18 PSIs, and 11 PDIs. This involves a combination of changes to numerator and denominator specifications, in addition to certain ICD/E-codes and DRG codes being added or removed.
• Removal of the Prediction Module (PM) that estimates the prevalence of conditions when Present on Admission (POA) data is not included in the users input file. Going forward, the user of the SAS QI v5.0 software will simply specify whether or not the input data includes POA data.

When the SAS QI v5.0 is released at the end of March, the software will be posted on the AHRQ Quality Indicators website and you will receive an email with a link to the software. Complete information about all of the changes in the QI SAS v5.0 will be included in the Release Notes that will be published when the software is released.

2. ICD-10 Alpha software will be released on March 13, 2015. At that time, you will receive an email with a link to where you can download the software from the AHRQ website.

• The software includes the CONTROL.SAS, Format, and SAS 1 programs from the v5.0 AHRQ QI software with conversions of ICD-9-CM codes to ICD-10 (Enhanced) codes.
• Please note: as an ‘alpha’ version, the software may require further refinement. AHRQ is very interested in receiving feedback from the users of the software. Please send your feedback to QISupport@ahrq.hhs.gov

If you have any questions please contact us at QISupport@ahrq.hhs.gov.

Sincerely,

The AHRQ QI Team