Citation

Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division. MSMR 2023; 30(6): 26-33.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, U.S. Armed Forces Surveillance Center)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

37540150

Abstract

Reducing preventable injury and ill- ness enhances the readiness of the Armed Forces, as illnesses and inju- ries degrade service member readiness and can hinder mission accomplishment. Since 2012, the MSMR has used a classification system derived from the Global Burden of Dis- ease (GBD) Study1,2 , in combination with an International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD- 10-CM) chapter-based system to broadly describe the morbidity burden among active component service members and categorize hospitalizations and ambulatory visits among this population. The MSMR edito- rial staff continues to refine these classification schemes to improve the usefulness of the information presented.

In these annual burden of disease reports, the MSMR groups diagnoses to inform our readership of the major drivers of health care utilization within the Military Health System (MHS) and where changes in policy or preventive emphasis may improve the medical readiness of the force. The major classification system for diagnoses, ICD-10-CM, features over 68,000 separate codes, a more than 5-fold increase from the 13,000 codes available in the previous version (ICD-9-CM).2 While the ICD-10-CM is organized in logical chapters, the group- ings are not optimized to describe burdens of disease in a military population. A delicate balance between "lumping" and "splitting" of diagnoses is required to achieve a mean- ingful portrayal of the burden in the military population.

The burden of disease in a young, healthy, predominantly male service member population will differ substantially from the general U.S. or global populations. The numerous readiness-related ambulatory vis- its required of each active duty service member, as well as military living circumstances, training requirements, and access to medical care without cost, may contribute to differing morbidity burden profiles in comparisons to other populations. Unique distributions in population demographics require...

Language: en