🤔 Question: How should abuse should be captured. Some pediatric patients come in with suspicious burns and child protective services (CPS) is called. After CPS investigates, sometimes it's ruled as not abuse and patient goes home with the caregiver that brought them in. In order to get the Report of Abuse fields to open, you have to click on Suspected Assault/Abuse. Is that what should be entered even after the investigation rules out abuse? And if so, does the Primary ICD-10 External Cause Code have to be an abuse code? In other words, does the circumstance of injury have to match the ICD 10 external cause code? This feels like underreporting the number of investigations of abuse, but then if no abuse is found, there will be overreporting abuse cases.

🌱 Answer: That question has been identified by others as well. The Data Definitions Workgroup looked at this and agreed that these 2 fields should not be linked. BData has just unlinked the "Report of Physical Abuse" from the "Circumstances of Injury". You may now select the appropriate Circumstances of Injury (like Accidental Injury, Recreation) and the Report of Physical Abuse. Note when an investigation was done and was found negative.

Question: For circumstances of Injury for the non-burn, non-injury patients (e.g. the rash/skin infection conditions), what should be selected? The most likely selection seems to be either 'OTHER' or 'NOT KNOW/NOT RECORDED' or leaving the question blank. (Asked March 2024).

🌱 Answer: The best selection is "Other" and then enter the non-burn injury details in the dropdown box. You will also enter “Rash/Skin infection” in the Etiology of Non-Burn Injury section.