Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology Department, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
J Dent Educ. 2013 Jan;77(1):24-36.
Although standardized terminologies such as the International Classification of Diseases have been in use in medicine for over a century, efforts in the dental profession to standardize dental diagnostic terms have not achieved widespread acceptance. To address this gap, a standardized dental diagnostic terminology, the EZCodes, was developed in 2009. Fifteen dental education institutions in the United States and Europe have implemented the EZCodes dental diagnostic terminology. This article reports on the utilization and valid entry of the EZCodes at three of the dental schools that have adopted this standardized dental diagnostic terminology. Electronic data on the use of procedure codes with diagnostic terms from the three schools over a period from July 2010 to June 2011 were aggregated. The diagnostic term and procedure code pairs were adjudicated by three calibrated dentists. Analyses were conducted to gain insight into the utilization and valid entry of the EZCodes diagnostic terminology in the one-year period. Error proportions in the entry of diagnostic term (and by diagnostic category) were also computed. In the twelve-month period, 29,965 diagnostic terms and 249,411 procedure codes were entered at the three institutions resulting in a utilization proportion of 12 percent. Caries and periodontics were the most frequently used categories. More than 1,000 of the available 1,321 diagnostic terms were never used. Overall, 60.5 percent of the EZCodes entries were found to be valid. The results demonstrate low utilization of EZCodes in an electronic health record and raise the need for specific training of dental providers on the importance of using dental diagnostic terminology and specifically how to use the terms in the electronic record. These findings will serve to increase the use/correct use of the EZCodes dental diagnostic terminology and ultimately create a reliable platform for undertaking clinical, outcomes, and quality improvement-related research.
尽管国际疾病分类等标准化术语在医学领域已经使用了一个多世纪，但牙科专业在标准化牙科诊断术语方面的努力并未得到广泛认可。为了解决这一差距，2009 年开发了一种标准化的牙科诊断术语，即 EZCodes。美国和欧洲的 15 所牙科教育机构已经实施了 EZCodes 牙科诊断术语。本文报告了在采用这种标准化牙科诊断术语的三所牙科学校中，EZCodes 的使用情况和有效录入情况。对这三所学校在 2010 年 7 月至 2011 年 6 月期间使用与诊断术语相关的程序代码的电子数据进行了汇总。三位经过校准的牙医对诊断术语和程序代码对进行了裁决。对一年期间 EZCodes 诊断术语的使用和有效录入情况进行了分析，还计算了诊断术语（按诊断类别）录入的错误比例。在 12 个月期间，这三所机构共录入了 29965 个诊断术语和 249411 个程序代码，利用率为 12%。龋病和牙周病是使用最频繁的类别。在可用的 1321 个诊断术语中，有超过 1000 个从未使用过。总体而言，有 60.5%的 EZCodes 录入是有效的。结果表明，电子健康记录中 EZCodes 的利用率较低，这需要对牙科提供者进行特定的培训，让他们了解使用牙科诊断术语的重要性，特别是如何在电子记录中使用这些术语。这些发现将有助于增加 EZCodes 牙科诊断术语的使用/正确使用，并最终为开展临床、结果和质量改进相关研究创建一个可靠的平台。
