FAQ

Use the "FAQ" Label
You should always check this blog to find the latest answers to the latest questions. This static FAQ is provided mostly for background and is not always the most up-to-date information available.

What Is Your Release Schedule?
The official DRG grouper is released every year on October 1st. We try to release our support for the new version within 5 business days of every US government release. Follow the "Release date" label for details.

What DRG Algorithms Do You Support?
We support ONLY the US Federal DRG assignment algorithm, also called the "MS DRGs" and "CMS DRGs". Follow the "DRG algorithm" label for details.

How Do You Validate Your Implementation?
Since all of our products are based on our DRG Assignment Engine (DAE), we validate that DAE intensively and the the DAE-production linkage lightly and separately. Each year, when they release the new DRG assignment algorithm version, the US Federal government also releases a validation data set. This data includes not only the validation inputs, but the expected outputs as well. We have an automated process which runs our DAE on all the inputs and confirms that the DAE outputs match the expected outputs. Since our DAE is backwardly compatible, we use regression testing to ensure that its support for previous versions is intact.

How Do I Buy Your Products?
We recently added an on-line shopping cart to our web site, www.drggroupers.net, which should allow you to buy our products on-line. Note: you will have the chance to download your purchase right after you pay for it using PayPal. As a back-up, you will be sent an email with a link in it to allow you to get your software if the automatic download did not work.

What Is TransferBigFiles.com?
TransferBigFiles.com is an unrelated service we use sometimes to deliver software to customers who are behind an email firewall which strips out .EXE attachments, or even .ZIP attachments containing a .EXE.

What Are The "Return Codes"?
Our DRG Assignment Engine (DAE) returns more than just the DRG and DRG-related information; it returns the status of the DRG assignment as well.

For more about the DRG-related information that is returned, follow the "DAE Outputs" label or refer to our manual.

For more about the status of the DRG assignment, also called "the grouper return code" or just "GRC" or "RC," refer to our tech support page or our manual.

Which Version Do I Need?
Each version is released on October 1st of every year and is currently only for a year, retiring on September 30th of the next year. The expected case is assigning a DRG to an inpatient (hospital) stay. The "final," as opposed to "working," DRG is assigned at discharge, so the version used is whatever is currently at the time of discharge. However, there are a variety of other situations (analysis, modeling, budget projection) in which one might choose to use a particular version and not the expected version.

What Versions of Unix Do You Support?
In-house, we run 32-bit and 64-bit Linux development environments, although as of 2015 we are seriously considering dropping support for 32-bit Linux.

Through a porting lab, Ready-to-Run, we support the following versions of DRGFilt and offer them in our on-line store:

  • DRGFilt for AIX
  • DRGFilt for SPARC (as of 2015, available only by request)
We also build the C-callable objects for AIX and SPARC; you have to order them by contacting us instead of using the on-line store.

In addition we can build executables for a wide range of platforms. Check out the Ready-to-Run site to see which platforms we can run on. We can often support a random platform for no extra charge, or for a small custom porting fee.

Is This The DRGGroupers.net FAQ?
No, it is not. This FAQ is for customers with technical support questions. That FAQ is for the general public who are trying to decide whether or not to do business with us.