Clinical Classifications Software (CCS)
What is the clinical classifications software (CCS)?
The CCS is a tool used to cluster patient diagnoses and procedures into clinically meaningful categories. Developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, simplifies the process of navigating through extensive code sets.
The CCS contains 285 mutually exclusive diagnosis categories and 231 mutually exclusive procedure categories and is used for ICD-9-CM. It is one of the databases and software tools developed as part of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP).
The CCD can be used with clinical data coded using ICD-9-CM codes to:
- Develop clinically-based utilization profiles
- Rank hospitalizations by type of condition
- Create risk adjustment models
- Predict future health resource utilization
- Explore the types of conditions and procedures most frequent in their study populations
- Compare alternative treatments for similar conditions
How is the clinical classification software (CCS) helpful?
The clinical grouping of CCS facilitates easier understanding of diagnoses and procedure patterns. This allows policymakers, health plans, and researchers to analyze costs, outcomes, and utilization associated with a specific illness or procedure.
CCS also makes statistical analysis and reporting more meaningful as it condenses over 14,000 diagnosis codes and 3,900 procedure codes into clinically meaningful categories. Furthermore, any analysis completed using CCS comes at a fraction of the time.