MINI-SENTINEL SAS MACRO TOOLKIT:
Medical Claims Extraction Tool
(%MS_GETMEDICAL)
Documentation version: 1.0
Prepared by the Mini-Sentinel Operations Center
For use with Medical Claims Extraction Tool version 1.0
November 28, 2012
Mini-Sentinel is a pilot project sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to inform and
facilitate development of a fully operational active surveillance system, the Sentinel System, for
monitoring the safety of FDA-regulated medical products. Mini-Sentinel is one piece of the Sentinel
Initiative, a multi-faceted effort by the FDA to develop a national electronic system that will complement
existing methods of safety surveillance. Mini-Sentinel Collaborators include Data and Academic Partners
that provide access to health care data and ongoing scientific, technical, methodological, and
organizational expertise. The Mini-Sentinel Coordinating Center is funded by the FDA through the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Contract number HHSF22320091000.
Medical Claims (Diagnosis and Procedures) Extraction Tool
1. Introduction
Medical (diagnosis and/or procedure) claims are needed in many queries and studies. This tool extracts
medical claims from the Mini-Sentinel Distributed Database (MSDD) using a list of user specified
diagnosis and/or procedure codes.
2. Program Objectives
With a user specified list of diagnosis and/or procedure codes, this program extracts diagnosis and/or
procedure claims from the MSDD. The user also has the option to remove duplicate claims. Please note
that if XXX is specified in the list of diagnosis and/or procedure codes, the algorithm will extract all
claims with a code starting with XXX. Note: if the code XXXYY is specified in addition to specifying code
XXX, a duplicate of a XXXYY coded claim will be extracted. Specifying the option to remove duplicates
will remove such duplicates.
3. Parameter Specifications
Program Macro
Short Description
Long Description
Procedure claims
SAS dataset
Details: The name of the source data set (.SAS7BDAT file format) containing the
procedure claims. The file must contain the PX and PX_CodeType variables. Note
that this input is optional if the user wishes only to extract medical claims based
on diagnosis claims. If this is the case, input should be left blank and no procedure
claims should be listed in the LISTINFILE. A dataset must be specified for the
DIAGINFILE parameter.
Variable Name
PROCINFILE
Input type: Optional, referenced with LIBREF.SAS-data-set
Format: text
Example: PROCINFILE = indata.Procedures
Mini-Sentinel SAS Macro Toolkit: Medical Claims Extraction Tool (%MS_GETMEDICAL)
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Program Macro
Short Description
Long Description
Diagnosis claims SAS
dataset
Details: The name of the source data set (.SAS7BDAT file format) containing the
diagnosis claims. The file must contain the DX and DX_CodeType variables. Note
that this input is optional if the user wishes only to extract medical claims based
on procedure claims. If this is the case, input should be left blank and no diagnosis
claims should be listed in the LISTINFILE. A dataset must be specified for the
PROCINFILE parameter.
Variable Name
DIAGINFILE
Input type: Optional, referenced with LIBREF.SAS-data-set
Format: text
LISTINFILE
List of diagnosis
and/or procedure
codes
Example: DIAGINFILE = indata.Diagnosis
Details: The name of the source data set (.SAS7BDAT file format) containing the
list of diagnosis and/or procedure codes to extract. The file must contain the Code
and CodeType variables.
Two methods are available to distinguish procedures and diagnosis codes:
•
The prefix of the Code type, with PX=Procedures and DX=Diagnosis; for
example, for extracting procedures using code type “C4”, the CodeType
variable would contain the value “PXC4”
or
•
The existence of an additional pre-coded Proc variable with its value set
to 1 for a procedure or to -1 for a diagnosis; this pre-coded Proc variable
has to be computed prior to the execution of the GETMEDICAL tool.
Input type: Required, referenced with LIBREF.SAS-data-set
Format: text
REMOVEDUP
Flag for the removal
of duplicate claims
Example: LISTINFILE = indata.MedicalRef
Details: Flag to determine if duplicate claims need to be removed (true
duplicates). If the flag variable is set to Yes then only distinct claims will be
extracted.
Input type: Optional, the variable has to be set to Yes to remove duplicates
Format: text
OUTFILE
Output file
Example: REMOVEDUP = Yes
Details: The name of the data set (.SAS7BDAT file format) containing the
extracted medical claims.
Input type: Required, referenced with LIBREF.SAS-data-set
Format: text
Example: OUTFILE = outdata.Meds
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4. Outputs
The output file consists of a SAS data set with the extracted medical claims.
5. Example
In the following example, the %MS_GETMEDICAL macro is used to extract distinct medical claims. The
indata library is the source for the procedure/diagnosis claims tables and the diagnosis/procedure codes
list (medicalref). The following parameters are used in the macro call:
%MS_GETMEDICAL(PROCINFILE=indata.procedures,
DIAGINFILE=indata.diagnosis,
LISTINFILE=indata.medicalref,
REMOVEDUP=Yes,
OUTFILE=outdata.medclaims
);
The extracted medical claims are outputted in the outdata.medclaims dataset.
6. Additional Macro Calls
This macro calls the macro makemacvar.sas. Please see documentation for makemacvar.sas for calling
parameters.
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