Ambulatory Patient Groups. An Evaluation for Military Health Care Use

In response to a Congressional mandate directing the Department of Defense to allocate resources based on a diagnosis related groups type system, a team of researchers from the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School, Directorate of Health Care Studies and Clinical Investigation evaluated the APGs developed by 3M-Health Information System. The APGs are a visit-based ambulatory classification system designed to group clinically similar visits for the purpose of reimbursement. The data base used for the evaluation consisted of a sample for data (516,006 visits) derived from the Army's Ambulatory Care Data Base (ACDB) study. The ACDB contains over 3.1 million patient visits recorded from six Army Medical Treatment Facilities (MTFs). The MTFs were selected for their diverse missions and populations constituting a representative sample of Army Medical Department health care. The major criteria employed to evaluate the APGs included: (a) clinical meaningfulness (i.e., from a clinical perspective did the groups make sense), (b) administrative Ambulatory care, Ambulatory patient groups, Military medicine.