Concept: Surgery Dates

Introduction

It is sometimes necessary to "fix" missing surgical procedure dates.

There are 12 fields for surgical dates (DATE01-DATE12) that correspond to the 12 fields for surgical codes (SC01-SC12) on the hospital claims (from 1987 onward).


• Surgical dates can be missing or set to zero, even when the corresponding surgical code is completed (eg. SC03 is completed but DATE03 is zero). This occurs when, for example, DATE03 is the same as either DATE02 (if DATE02 is not equal to zero) or DATE01.
  
  
• Thus the previous date not equal to zero can be substituted. For example, if SC01-SC03 are completed, but only DATE01 is completed, DATE01 can be used for all three surgical procedures. If DATE01 is zero and there is a corresponding SC01, then the surgery date is the admittance date.