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We have conducted a nationally representative before-after study of the effects of the diagnosis related groups-based prospective payment system (PPS) on quality of in-hospital care for aged Medicare patients. We used a pre-post design with multiple time points in both the pre-PPS (calendar years 1981 and 1982) and post-PPS (July 1985 through June 1986) periods. We gathered clinically detailed data from medical records of patients with one of six diseases and supplemented these data with postdischarge information from Health Care Financing Administration files. We used a stratified multistage cluster sampling design with data gathered on 16,758 patients chosen from 297 hospitals in 30 areas in five states. Our hospital participation rate was 97%; we successfully accessed 96% of the medical records we requested; and our mean item-level reliability score was 0.80. Our sample matches the nation closely on hospital urbanicity, size, teaching status, ownership, and percentages of Medicare and Medicaid patients, and patient demographics and mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide use of DSM-III by clinicians and researchers in the United States has led to difficulties in reporting to federal agencies, which adhere to a policy supporting the use of ICD-9-CM. To rectify this situation, three federal agencies collaborated to design a translation, or "crosswalk," from DSM-III to ICD-9-CM. The authors discuss some of the differences between the two systems, describe the development of the crosswalk, and make suggestions concerning future nosological and statistical systems.