Using Billing Codes to Create a Pediatric Functional Status e-Score for Children Receiving Inpatient Rehabilitation

This study explores using billing codes from electronic medical records to assess the functional status of children in inpatient rehabilitation. Expert clinicians ranked billing codes based on their relevance to patient functional status in self-care, mobility, and cognition/communication. The study found that expert clinicians' code selections aligned with statistical modeling, supporting the use of billing data to create a Pediatric Functional Status e-Score (PFSeS).

• 1
  The top 250 and 500 codes identified by statistical modeling were mostly comprised of codes selected by the consultant panel (78–80% of the top 250 and 71–78% of the top 500).
• 2
  Clinical experts' selection of functionally meaningful codes corresponds with codes selected by statistical modeling as most strongly associated with WeeFIM® domain scores.
• 3
  The top 5 codes most strongly related to functional independence ratings from a domain specific assessment indicate clinically sensible relationships.