Central elements of the strategy:

  • The policies must be based on an active cooperation and a steered process that guarantees continuity in expertise in healthcare classifications and casemix
  • The key deliverables timely production and high quality must be guaranteed
  • Active cooperation in Nordic benchmarking and analyses of healthcare activity to improve quality and efficiency
  • Open availability of all material including definition tables of NordDRG
  • To develop and maintain tools to compare and combine information from national versions of primary classifications
  • To promote knowledge and understanding about content and use of Nordic casemix systems to stakeholders at all levels of healthcare


Key actions for implementation of the central elements

  • The roles and responsibilities of participating national organisations and the Nordic Casemix Centre must be clear (Roles and responsibilities in the Nordic casemix cooperation)
  • The member organisations who use the system need to have a more active role in the NordDRG-work in the future to reach a more stable organisation
  • A steered maintenance process is a key to assure delivery in time and the sufficient quality of the end product (NordDRG updating and maintenance processes and principles and NordDRG Update Process Timetable)
  • The NordDRG definition tables and the NordDRG Manual must be publicly available to allow different software producers to develop competing grouper programs. If the name NordDRG is used the quality of these programs must be guaranteed by certification from the Nordic Casemix Centre
  • The Nordic Centre and the national owners produce and update a master version of the grouper solely for internal use. Neither the owners of NordDRG nor the Nordic Centre intends to market any NordDRG grouper software. Marketing of the grouper software is the task of the software developer. Therefore, access to grouper software that conforms to the NordDRG standards and national needs must be guaranteed through an agreement with a software developer
  • The primary classifications must be available as part of the NordDRG definition tables and the NordDRG Manual. The copyright for these classifications remains with the national owners for the national language versions of ICD-10 (WHO for the international ICD-10) and NCSP (NOMESCO), respectively and the availability of the textual presentation of the codes may be limited by the copyright owners
  • An active cooperation presupposes good national knowledge about NordDRG, its application areas and the updating process. The work with the stakeholders, information sharing and education, must thus be given a high priority
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