Methodological issues on the use of administrative data in healthcare research: the case of heart failure hospitalizations in Lombardy region, 2000 to 2012

Table 3 Description of construction criteria for MINIMAL database

	Ordinary admissions for acute cases	Day Hospital	Outpatient services	Emergency room services	Pharmaceutical prescriptions
Who	Patient ID
What
level1	Admission for acute cases	Day Hospital	Outpatient service	Emergency room service	Pharmaceutical prescription
level2	CCS-principal diagnosis	CCS-principal diagnosis	Service code class	Service code class	ATC code
level3	DRG	DRG	Service code	Service code	Drug code
when	Date of discharge	Date of discharge	Date of service delivery	Date of service delivery	Date of prescription
where	Hospital code	Hospital code	ASL code of the hospital	ASL code of the hospital	ASL code of the pharmacy
how many	Length of stay	Number of accesses	Number of services	Number of services	Days covered by prescription according to DDD
how much	Cost of admission	Cost of admission	Cost of the service	Cost of the service	Cost of the prescription

ASL is a territorial grouping of facilities
Abbreviations: ATC Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical, CCS Clinical Classifications Software by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, DDD defined daily dose

ISSN: 1472-6963