Drug overdose in the ED: a record linkage study examining emergency department ICD-10 coding practices in a cohort of people who inject drugs.
Rehana Di RicoDhanya NambiarMark StoovéPaul DietzePublished in: BMC health services research (2018)
Reliance on diagnoses alone when examining ED data will likely significantly underestimate incidence of specific drug overdose due to frequent use of non-specific ICD-10 codes and the use of single diagnostic codes to represent polysubstance overdose. Measures to improve coding specificity should be considered and further work is needed to determine the best way to use ED data in overdose surveillance.