Viewpoint: a comparison of cause-of-injury coding in U.S. military and civilian hospitals

Abstract

Introduction: Complete and accurate coding of injury causes is essential to the understanding of injury etiology and to the development and evaluation of injury-prevention strategies. While civilian hospitals use ICD-9-CM external cause-of-injury codes, military hospitals use codes derived from the NATO Standardization Agreement (STANAG) 2050.

Discussion: The STANAG uses two separate variables to code injury cause. The Trauma code uses a single digit with 10 possible values to identify the general class of injury as battle injury, intentionally inflicted nonbattle injury, or unintentional injury. The Injury code is used to identify cause or activity at the time of the injury. For a subset of the Injury codes, the last digit is modified to indicate place of occurrence. This simple system contains fewer than 300 basic codes, including many that are specific to battle- and sports-related injuries not coded well by either the ICD-9-CM or the draft ICD-10-CM. However, while falls, poisonings, and injuries due to machinery and tools are common causes of injury hospitalizations in the military, few STANAG codes correspond to these events. Intentional injuries in general and sexual assaults in particular are also not well represented in the STANAG. Because the STANAG does not map directly to the ICD-9-CM system, quantitative comparisons between military and civilian data are difficult.

Conclusions: The ICD-10-CM, which will be implemented in the United States sometime after 2001, expands considerably on its predecessor, ICD-9-CM, and provides more specificity and detail than the STANAG. With slight modification, it might become a suitable replacement for the STANAG.