Page 68 - S. Ličen, I. Karnjuš, & M. Prosen (Eds.). (2019). Women, migrations and health: Ensuring transcultural healthcare. Koper, University of Primorska Press.
P. 68
vanni Delli Zotti
variable to be used with caution in order to select the case studies of interest,
resulting more reliable, to avoid the risk of losing relevant cases, the use the
fields reporting the diagnoses and interventions performed on patients.
The database also reports the ‘Progressive HDR,’ which shows an anomaly:
starting from the first patient of the year, each admission is assigned an in-
cremental HDR code, but the highest code number does not correspond to
the total number of hospitalizations. The analysis of ‘missing’ HDR records
shows that they tend to grow over time, reaching over 10 in the last two
years. There are also some inexplicable oscillations, such as the sudden up-
surge in 2007 and the halving in 2012. By ordering HDR records inside each
year, one may note that the lack of HDR codes does not present a discern-
able ‘pattern.’ The deleted cards may be related to a demission followed by
admission to another Department, although a new HDR should only be cre-
ated in a few wellspecified cases. In fact, according to the prescriptions of
the Ministry of Health: ‘the identification number, attributed to each medical
record and of the relative HDR, must be the same for the entire duration of
admission, regardless of internal transfers within the same health institution.
Exceptions are the transitions from ordinary to day hospital and from acute to
rehabilitation or long-term care, or vice versa. In the latter cases, a new med-
ical record and a new HDR must be completed’ (Ministero della Salute, 2018,
p. 10). One may guess that the removal of numerous HDRs depends on con-
trols that detected duplications or induced to delete incomplete HDR cards,
but it is necessary that these aspects are clarified in order to allow a correct
use of this information.
Marital status, education and profession variables are present in the data-
base, but unusable because in most cases the fields are not filled out. It is not
clear why, given that marital status and education are classified as compulso-
rily fields in the Functional Specifications of the Ministry of Health (Ministero
della Salute, 2017). These provisions are recent, but they do no more than re-
iterate that marital status is a mandatory field, since the introduction of the
HDR with the D.M. October 27, 2000, n. 380, and education has been defined
mandatory with the D.M. July 8, 2010, n. 135. Unfortunately, the unavailabil-
ity of this information for the vast majority of hospitalizations deprives INTE-
GRA Project of important cognitive elements that would be useful for socially
identifying hospitalized women and for the construction of the Sexual and
Reproductive Health Index. Moreover, these shortcomings make it difficult
to compare with the hospitalization analyzes carried out by Slovenian part-
ners, who can count on the availability of complete information regarding
the education and marital status of patients.
66
variable to be used with caution in order to select the case studies of interest,
resulting more reliable, to avoid the risk of losing relevant cases, the use the
fields reporting the diagnoses and interventions performed on patients.
The database also reports the ‘Progressive HDR,’ which shows an anomaly:
starting from the first patient of the year, each admission is assigned an in-
cremental HDR code, but the highest code number does not correspond to
the total number of hospitalizations. The analysis of ‘missing’ HDR records
shows that they tend to grow over time, reaching over 10 in the last two
years. There are also some inexplicable oscillations, such as the sudden up-
surge in 2007 and the halving in 2012. By ordering HDR records inside each
year, one may note that the lack of HDR codes does not present a discern-
able ‘pattern.’ The deleted cards may be related to a demission followed by
admission to another Department, although a new HDR should only be cre-
ated in a few wellspecified cases. In fact, according to the prescriptions of
the Ministry of Health: ‘the identification number, attributed to each medical
record and of the relative HDR, must be the same for the entire duration of
admission, regardless of internal transfers within the same health institution.
Exceptions are the transitions from ordinary to day hospital and from acute to
rehabilitation or long-term care, or vice versa. In the latter cases, a new med-
ical record and a new HDR must be completed’ (Ministero della Salute, 2018,
p. 10). One may guess that the removal of numerous HDRs depends on con-
trols that detected duplications or induced to delete incomplete HDR cards,
but it is necessary that these aspects are clarified in order to allow a correct
use of this information.
Marital status, education and profession variables are present in the data-
base, but unusable because in most cases the fields are not filled out. It is not
clear why, given that marital status and education are classified as compulso-
rily fields in the Functional Specifications of the Ministry of Health (Ministero
della Salute, 2017). These provisions are recent, but they do no more than re-
iterate that marital status is a mandatory field, since the introduction of the
HDR with the D.M. October 27, 2000, n. 380, and education has been defined
mandatory with the D.M. July 8, 2010, n. 135. Unfortunately, the unavailabil-
ity of this information for the vast majority of hospitalizations deprives INTE-
GRA Project of important cognitive elements that would be useful for socially
identifying hospitalized women and for the construction of the Sexual and
Reproductive Health Index. Moreover, these shortcomings make it difficult
to compare with the hospitalization analyzes carried out by Slovenian part-
ners, who can count on the availability of complete information regarding
the education and marital status of patients.
66
