Using administratively collected hospital discharge data for AIDS surveillance.

The objectives of this study were twofold: to improve methods of identifying possible and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)-related hospital discharges in administrative databases and to measure AIDS-reporting completeness in Massachusetts both overall and by subgroup. We used fiscal year 1988 discharge data from the Massachusetts Rate Setting Commission (RSC) and data from the Massachusetts AIDS Reporting System (ARS). We identified 3362 discharges of adult patients (> 12 years old) from the RSC file that had diagnosis codes which are human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-specific (042.