SNOMED CT in multidisciplinary clinical practice--evaluation of usefulness for classification and coding of care-planning procedures.

Studies of the usefulness of SNOMED CT in everyday clinical practice have received little attention. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of SNOMED CT in a multidisciplinary clinical setting. Another aim was to examine how well the terminology of care-planning procedures in a local development project could be mapped to SNOMED CT, and to explore the terminological surroundings in terms of superordinate concepts, subordinate concepts and coordinate concepts. A term list of 66 non-analysed types of procedures, considered necessary in the documentation of care planning, had been compiled in a local development project. The Clue-browser, version 5.5, was used to browse for matching concepts in SNOMED CT, and the degree of correspondence was assessed for each item. Of the 66 procedures, 72% corresponded completely and 22% corresponded partly to concepts in SNOMED CT. No match was found for 6% of the procedures. More subordinate concepts) were lacking in 30% of the concepts. The study showed that SNOMED CT could be mapped fairly well to care-planning procedures in a multidisciplinary setting such as advanced home health care. The terminological surroundings were extensive and stable for superordinate concepts (stem concepts), but unstable regarding subordinate concepts. SNOMED CT and the Clue-browser were feasible for choosing terminology with machine-readable codes for a specific area where there is no terminology in Swedish.