WHO Emergency Medical Teams Minimal Data Set in Conflict-Stricken Ukraine: Comparative Analysis of a New Primary Health Care Coding Tool

Abstract

Background/Introduction:The WHO EMT Minimum Data Set (EMT-MDS) was designed for data collection in sudden-onset disasters. Using EMT-MDS in the context of primary health care (PHC) generated large quantities of low granularity data that threatened the successful delivery of UK-Med’s clinical programs in Ukraine. Accordingly, UK-Med developed, piloted, and implemented a new coding tool (PHC-CT) tailored to PHC presentations prevalent in humanitarian settings.Objectives:To assess the performance of EMT-MDS and PHC-CT in the generation of programmatically-useful diagnostic codes from data collected in mobile PHC clinics in Ukraine during active conflict.To compare the performance of EMT-MDS and PHC-CT in this setting and to suggest recommendations for data collection tool improvements.Method/Description:After multiple iterations, the final version of PHC-CT was used to collect clinical data from all UK-Med clinical encounters in Ukraine from March 28, 2022-May 13, 2022. Clinical data using EMT-MDS were collected simultaneously. The prevalence of each diagnostic code was calculated using both EMT-MDS and PHC-CT, expressed as a proportion of the total diagnoses, and compared between the two coding tools.Results/Outcomes:1,390 clinical encounters took place during the study. Data coded using EMT-MDS generated 1,756 diagnoses (86.8% of total diagnoses) categorized as “Other Diagnosis” while the same data coded using PHC-CT generated 37 diagnoses (1.8% of total diagnoses) categorized as “Other Diagnosis.” Only seven of the available 25 diagnostic codes in EMT-MDS were used, while 48 of the 67 available diagnostic codes in PHC-CT were used.Conclusion:PHC-CT offers substantial benefits beyond those provided by EMT-MDS when utilized in mobile PHC clinics in humanitarian settings.Tables and Figures (optional)Table 1.Number of Clinical Encounters, Unique Diagnoses, and Frequency of Selected Diagnostic Codes for EMT-MDS and PHC-CT. (Note: % refers to proportion of diagnoses made)