Bug Fix For DRGFilt

When validating some of our other software, we discovered a long-standing bug in our DRGFilt product which supports ICD10 codes, both the Linux and Windows implementations. This bug is in versions v33, v34 and v34a, v35 and v35a, v36 and v37.

The patched versions are as follows:

• v33a
• v34b
• v35b
• v36a
• v37a

The bug does not affect DRG assignment; it only affects reporting of the DRG weight. Specifically, unpatched executables  report the DRG weight as 10 times greater than it is. Thus 1.2345 was reported as 12.3450.

The good news is that if you are using the weights for their usual purpose, predicting relative resource consumption, you code worked because all the weights were increased by the same factor.

The bad news is that the weights were wrong.

Here are the steps we have taken to correct this issue:

1. We have patched the sources and built new DRGFilt executables: v33a, v34b, v35a, v36a and v37a.
2. We have sent updated versions to any and all clients who purchased the buggy products.
3. We have updated our on-line store with the new executables.
4. We have posted this message on our Tech Blog
5. We are updating our QA process to make sure that we do not have weight reporting problems ever again.

V36 Validation

Looks like 460 cases fail, with 57 underlying DRGs. That should not be too bad.

Update Sun Sep 30 7:11pm Eastern: we are close, but not close enough to pull the trigger tonight. We are expecting to finish validation and do the release by the end of business tomorrow.

Update Mon Oct 1 7:04pm Eastern: we are down to two DRG definitions which have issues; we ran into issues interpreting the specs for some of the pseudo-code, requiring us to slog through the IBM 360 assembler version. But we are now very confident that we will finish validation early tomorrow and do the release tomorrow afternoon.

Update Tue Oct 2 11:22am Eastern: the official test data set passes through our DRG engine without any issues, so QA is done and we are starting the release process.

Update Wed Oct 3 2:11pm Eastern: our usual 32 bit Linux environment is out of action and we have to move to the backup environment which is taking some time. It is not clear how many more 32 bit Linux releases we will do.

Update Wed Oct 3 8:34pm Eastern: our back up 32 bit Linux environment has been configured and our development system ported to it and now we have 32 bit Linux executables again.

V36 Masks & Weights

The V36 masks and weights file has been built and validated. The logic module is still under construction. This year's differences from last year are pretty massive. Validation is going to be epic this year.

V36 Begins

We have downloaded the latest files from CMS and have begun the development process. Sadly for us, the logic file has been formatted in such a way as to make discerning differences from the previous version rather painful, but as soon as we have a sense of what we are dealing with, we will update this blog with an expected release date.