Citation

Luke MJ, Scribano PV. Pediatrics 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, American Academy of Pediatrics)

DOI

10.1542/peds.2023-062205

PMID

37431598

Abstract

From "walked into lamppost" to "struck by duck," the 2015 revision of the International Classification of Disease (ICD-10) offered new codes to describe some of the obscurest circumstances for medical documentation. Perhaps less widely recognized, this edition also gave birth to a subset of codes to document problems of undoubtedly higher prevalence: health-related social needs (HRSN). Despite the well-known clinical significance of social determinants of health (SDOH), several studies in adult inpatient literature show that these "Z-codes" are vastly underutilized.1,-5

In this issue of Pediatrics, McQuistion et al6 compared 2016 and 2019 data from the Kids Inpatient Database to identify differences in use of SDOH Z-codes or related ICD-10 codes recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, stratified by patient and hospital characteristics. Similar to adult literature, they found that SDOH code use increased with time but remained underutilized, with the most documentation seen...

Language: en