The Procedures MICA (Missouri Information for Community Assessment) database identifies operative, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures performed during a patient encounter or stay at a health care facility. Multiple procedures may be performed during a single patient health care encounter. As such, a patient abstract record may reflect up to 20 different procedures. It is important to recognize that the procedure counts in this MICA are not the same as frequency counts for patients or patient encounters.

Procedure Codes and Clinical Classification Software

For data prior to the fourth quarter of 2015, procedures associated with inpatient and outpatient visits are classified in accordance with the Ninth Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9). The procedure groupings used in this MICA are based on the Clinical Classification Software (CCS). CCS is a tool for clustering patient diagnoses and procedures into a manageable number of clinically meaningful categories. The CCS compresses the 3,500 procedure codes of the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) into 231 mutually exclusive categories. In its multi-level mode, the system further categorizes these 231 into some 16 broader groupings.

Further information on the clinical classification, as well as the list of diagnoses and procedures utilized by CCS, can be found at http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/toolssoftware/ccs/ccs.jsp.