Abstract
We designed a microcomputer-based information system (IS), using commercially-available relational data base management software, to track the succession of patient management encounters. The IS includes an algorithm for computing the average daily patient load (ADPL) of residents providing either primary care, or in a supervisory role on the general inpatient service. The IS yields a compilation of the patients managed by each resident (a patient “log”), a frequency distribution of diagnoses for the total program, and a computation of the ADPL on the inpatient service. To minimize the data-submission burden on the resident, much of the raw data was culled by secretarial level personnel from daily reports provided by the data processing department. We analyzed 1900 consecutive patient-encounters, both intra- and extramural, and derived the following distribution of the 10 most frequent diagnoses (decreasing frequency): prematurity; unspecified septicemia; non-infectious gastroenteritis; asthma; pneumonia (unspecified); status asthmaticus; convulsions; asthmatic bronchitis; toxic-effect, lead; and transient tachypnea of the newborn. The above distribution reflects the composite experience of a primary-care oriented program and a tertiary children's hospital (where residents spend about one-third of their overall training experience). Separate ICDA codes assigned for asthma-related conditions were aggregated. This yielded a composite of 200 patient-encounters (10.5% of the sample). The asthma-related category was the most frequent diagnostic group encountered.
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Kallen, R. INFORMATION MANAGEMENT FOR A COMMUNITY–BASED PEDIATRIC RESIDENCY PROGRAM. Pediatr Res 21 (Suppl 4), 284 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198704010-00700
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198704010-00700