Patient Workflow Steps in MIMIC-III

Question

I'm trying to build a workflow model for subjects in the MIMIC-III data set. there's clearly no shortage of activities in here but if I were trying to track the major steps in the process (treatment protocol?) it might start with a patient (subject_id) admission (hadm_id), showing up at a site (admission_location), and subsequently leaving (discharge_location). But given the number of items in Chartevents, Datetimeevents, Procedureevents and others, quite a bit takes place at the detail level and it's not clear if there's a summary level available or one that I can create.

So if I was trying to show the patient arriving, getting some treatment (perhaps a treatment in some major category e.g. the service description in Services or diagnosis), getting admitted, getting more treatment (same or new diagnosis), getting admitted to the ICU, getting more treatment (same or new diagnosis), getting better and getting discharged.

Is there a strategy that might be helpful to map out the basic flow from a higher level?

Answer 1

The transfers table will track patients; so that gives you the "flow" of a patient through the hospital.

As for capturing the "major" events, that's pretty subjective, and the data is wholly ICU focused with very little data captured outside the ICU. So, you could use code in the mimic-code repository to define dialysis, ventilation, vasopressor usage, or something similar, but this would be ICU specific.

Alternatively, you could use the CPT codes or ICD-9 procedure codes to define events which occurred in the hospital, but these codes aren't timestamped.