csapAIH: a function to classify ambulatory care sensitive conditions in the statistical software R

Abstract

Hospitalizations due to ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) are an indirect indicator of primary health care. A package in the R program was developed in order to automatize the classification of codes of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems - 10^th Revision (ICD-10), according to the Brazilian list of ACSC, and provide functionalities for the management of the "reduced files" of the inpatient hospital authorization (AIH). The csapAIH package contains a homonym function, which reads the data according to its nature (file or data frame with AIH structure, or a factor with ICD-10 codes) and returns, according to defined options, a databank or vector containing the classification for the hospitalization. This article presents the package and the function csapAIH, its installation mode and use, and examples of its functionalities, which may add quickness, precision and validity to the research of ACSC in Brazil.

Key words:
Hospitalization; Primary Health Care; Health Services Research; Health Information Systems; Automatic Data Processing