Updated Diagnosis Grouping System for Pediatric Emergency Department Visits

ObjectivesThis study aims to update the Diagnosis Grouping System (DGS) for International Classification of Disease, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes for ongoing use. The DGS was developed in 2010 using ICD-9 codes with 21 major groups and 27 subgroups to facilitate research on pediatric patients presenting to emergency departments and required updated classification for more recent ICD codes.MethodsAll emergency department discharges available in the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) database for 2016 were included to identify ICD-10 codes. These codes were then mapped onto the DGS codes originally derived from ICD-9. We used ICD-10 codes from the PECARN database from 2017 to 2019 to confirm validity.ResultsThe DGS was updated with ICD-10 codes based on 2016 PECARN data, and this updated DGS was successfully applied to 6,853,479 (97.3%) of all codes from 2017 to 2019.DiscussionUsing ICD-10 codes from the PECARN Registry, the DGS was updated to reflect ICD-10 codes to facilitate ongoing research.