Patent ID: 8571892

Claim:
A method of creating a classification system for rating the nature and severity of health care requirements, including: (a) a computer system obtaining a set of medical disease codes; (b) categorizing the medical disease codes into major disease categories using the computer system; (c) categorizing the medical disease codes in each major disease category into episode disease categories based on severity of health care requirements using the computer system; (d) sub-dividing at least some of the episode disease categories using the computer system by severity of illness level by using severity of illness rules to take into account other episode disease categories or other information not related to a particular episode disease category being subdivided; and (e) defining criteria using the computer system for assigning an overall clinical risk group to an individual patient, where the criteria takes into account the episode disease categories and severity of illness levels, where the criteria adjusts for the effect of interacting conditions in different episode disease categories.