CAISS Data Quality & Registry Standards 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which AIS edition is currently endorsed by AAAM and most US trauma registries for prospective injury coding?
- AIS 1990 Revision
- AIS 2005 Update 2008 (Correct answer)
- AIS 1998
- AIS 2015 Prototype
Correct answer: AIS 2005 Update 2008
AIS 2005 Update 2008 (commonly called AIS 2008) is the most widely endorsed edition for US trauma registry coding.
Question 2: What is the term for the process of linking trauma registry records to vital statistics death records to improve outcome data?
- Data harmonization
- Record linkage (Correct answer)
- Registry enrichment
- Probabilistic scoring
Correct answer: Record linkage
Record linkage is the process of matching registry records to external databases such as death certificates to capture outcomes not available in hospital data.
Question 3: A registry audit finds that 15% of burn injury cases lack a recorded total body surface area (TBSA). This represents a deficiency in which data quality dimension?
- Accuracy
- Timeliness
- Completeness (Correct answer)
- Consistency
Correct answer: Completeness
Missing required fields such as TBSA for burn cases represents a completeness deficiency in registry data quality.
Question 4: Under ACS trauma center verification standards, how frequently must a trauma registry undergo a formal data quality review?
- Monthly
- Quarterly
- Annually, at minimum (Correct answer)
- Every five years
Correct answer: Annually, at minimum
ACS standards require at minimum an annual formal review of trauma registry data quality as part of the performance improvement process.
Question 5: When a patient sustains injuries in a motor vehicle crash and is coded with multiple AIS scores, which scoring system uses the sum of the squares of the three highest AIS scores from different body regions?
- TRISS
- NISS
- ISS (Correct answer)
- RTS
Correct answer: ISS
The Injury Severity Score (ISS) is calculated as the sum of the squares of the three highest AIS scores from three different body regions.
Question 6: What distinguishes the New Injury Severity Score (NISS) from the ISS in terms of data quality considerations?
- NISS uses ICD-10 codes instead of AIS codes
- NISS allows multiple injuries from the same body region to contribute to the score (Correct answer)
- NISS requires radiologic confirmation for all injuries
- NISS is only applicable to pediatric patients
Correct answer: NISS allows multiple injuries from the same body region to contribute to the score
Unlike ISS, the NISS takes the three highest AIS scores regardless of body region, allowing multiple severe injuries in the same region to be counted.
Question 7: A registry coder is uncertain whether to assign AIS 3 or AIS 4 to a specific spinal fracture. What is the best resource to resolve this ambiguity?
- The ICD-10 coding guidelines
- The AIS 2005 Update 2008 codebook injury descriptor table (Correct answer)
- The hospital's billing department
- The NTDB submission manual
Correct answer: The AIS 2005 Update 2008 codebook injury descriptor table
The AIS codebook's injury descriptor tables provide the specific criteria and severity assignments that resolve coding ambiguity for specific injury types.
CAISS Data Quality & Registry Standards 4
Which AIS edition is currently endorsed by AAAM and most US trauma registries for prospective injury coding?