Diagnostic management

Update of diagnostic coding system rolls on

In health care, narrative descriptions of symptoms, diseases, injuries, complaints, disabilities and procedures are routinely transformed into numeric or alphanumeric codes, facilitating billing, clinical research and the analysis of health care cost and quality.

Diagnostic management efforts thrive on teamwork

As choices mount for patient testing and treatment, diagnostic management has arisen at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to address two closely related questions that clinicians must ask themselves more and more often: have I ordered the right tests for this patient; and, taken together, what do these test results imply for the best treatment of this patient?