Optional Variables - Emergency Room MICA

Many MICAs contain a category of variables called ‘Optional Variables'. These are variables are often specific to each MICA topic. Therefore, the presence and types of Optional Variables will vary between MICAs.

Registered Users will find the following Optional Variables available for the Emergency Room MICA:

Pay Source

Emergency Room records received by DHSS include information on the anticipated pay source for the visit. This may not reflect the source of payment finally used.

Disposition

Each Emergency Room record contains information about the disposition of the patient at discharge, specifically the place where they have been discharged or transferred (i.e., long-term care, deceased, etc.).

Admission Month

Emergency room MICA allows queries to be run by month, as well as by year. Some trends related to diagnosis and discharge patterns are cyclical. For example, flu season runs from roughly October to May, detail that would be lost if a user looked only at annual rates of influenza discharges.