Circumstances of Injury

🤔 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.

🌱 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.

Etiology of Burn Injury

🤔 Question: A patient with diabetic neuropathy sustained a burn from the radiant heat of a fire because they were too close. They could not feel that they were being burned due to their condition. Their clothes didn’t catch fire from the radiant heat of the fire. How would this etiology be entered into BCQP?

🌱 Answer: If this was from an open flame, record this as flash from an open flame and then document more specifics in the injury note. This will be forwarded to the Data Definitions Workgroup to determine if an additional etiology of burn injury should be added.

🤔 Question: There is a patient that states they received their injury from a scald from boiling water. When the patient went to surgery the surgeon stated this injury is not a burn. What should be entered for the patient as a burn or non-burn etiology in the registry?

🌱 Answer: The burn surgeon should determine the most likely cause of the injury (burn or non-burn) and then the specific cause if known. If the surgeon thinks it was, for example, a friction/shearing injury but does not sure specifically what type you can enter Friction/Shearing: Other or if it looks like a Traumatic Injury select a cause or Other.