POA Logic Indicator (Exempt Flag)

With the introduction of the Present On Admission concept came three distinct data elements:

• POA Logic Indicator / Exempt flag: an official grouper parameter which is a record-level flag which tells the grouper whether  or not POA logic (including the Hospital Acquired Condition rules, or HAC);
• POA Flag: an official grouper parameter which is a diagnosis-level flag which tells the group how to process this code against the HAC rules
• Have POA Flag: a DRGGroupers software parameters which, when part of our API, tells our software whether or not to look for POA flags

(Since POA comes up in so many contexts, we prefer to call the "POA Logic Indicator" something else: "the exempt-from-HAC flag" or simply "the exempt flag." Be advised that this is not how CMS refers to this data element.)

There are only two legal values for this flag:


X - Exempt from POA reporting
Z - Requires POA reporting

Note that "2" seems to be used by the grouper folks to means "throw me an error if there is HAC rule processing to do."