Health care facilities treat many types of patients. For hospitals, patients are called inpatients and stay overnight. For outpatient facilities, such as a clinic or ambulatory center, patients will arrive for an appointment, treatment, test, or procedure and then return home the same day. For a long-term facility, such as a nursing home, patients will stay for weeks or months—or even years. Keeping a patient record of treatment rendered is important to maintain a health care facility, support the reimbursement process to receive payment for services rendered, and sustain the health of the patient. The patient record is a legal document. There is a saying in health care, “If it was not documented, it was not done.” These patient data can be in paper or electronic format. The type of data collected in each facility’s patient health records is established by required standards or regulations. For this assignment, in 1–2 pages, you will review the three data sets below and describe each data set element. You will also list 1 similarity and 1 difference between the data sets.
- Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set (UHDDS) for inpatients
- Uniform Ambulatory Care Data Set (UACDS) for outpatient or ambulatory patients
- Minimum Data Set (MDS) for long-term care
Be sure to support your information by citing at least 2 references using APA format.
