Developing an Allied Health Code Set: The Indicator for Intervention.

possibly all three. IFIs focus on a client’s needs and difficulties, rather than an esoteric disease process. Although the Allied Health Minimum data set adequately describes the characteristics of the client and of the care provider, it does not provide information on why the allied health professional is intervening. Collecting this data will help in understanding the demand for the service and what needs to be put into place in order to help meet demand. Within the healthcare sector, and particularly in the acute hospital setting, Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) are widely used as a way of classifying inpatient admissions. They do so by grouping together inpatient stays of similar levels of complexity which utilise similar amounts of resources. However, DRGs and diagnoses are not a sensitive or accurate basis for predicting allied health costs. For example, the diagnostic group of dementia does not actually predict how much allied health intervention may be needed. It is more likely to be the current living circumstances of the patient or particular patient characteristics, rather than the specific type of dementia or even its severity, that predict the type of allied health intervention needed. In contrast, the IFI focuses on the characteristics of patient behaviour, not the disease process, and are behavioural rather than biological in nature. Within the acute care setting in hospitals there are three main areas: emergency care, inpatient care and outpatient care. Within the emergency care setting, information is collected about why people are presenting and their current diagnosis. A patient who presents within this setting may also be referred to outpatient services. Within the outpatient setting, however, it is still unclear what services are provided and who is receiving these services. In this area the IFI therefore becomes a valuable and crucial measure. A slightly different version of this article appears on the NAHCC website: Permission to publish this version of the article in HIMJ has been kindly granted by the NAHCC Committee.