authorization discharge date
auth_dsch_dtDefinition
The recorded hospital or facility discharge date linked to an inpatient prior authorization in utilization management, EHR, and payer adjudication systems. Used by data engineers to calculate authorized length-of-stay compliance, reconcile inpatient claims, and support concurrent review workflows in care management and claims processing pipelines.
Standard Abbreviation
auth_dsch_dt
Category
clinical
Database Usage
-- Example column naming
CREATE TABLE claims (
clm_id VARCHAR(50),
auth_dsch_dt DATE, -- authorization discharge date (date only, no time)
...
);
-- Example in SELECT
SELECT
clm_id,
auth_dsch_dt as authorization_discharge_date
FROM claims;Example database column name
ISO-11179 snake_case standard
-- Recommended column name
auth_dsch_dt
-- Example DDL
CREATE TABLE healthcare_data (
record_id VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
auth_dsch_dt DATE, -- authorization discharge date (date only, no time)
created_dt TIMESTAMP NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW()
);Column names follow the ISO-11179 naming convention: lowercase, underscore-separated, using the standard abbreviation as a prefix where applicable.
Why This Term Matters
Clinical terms are the building blocks of risk adjustment, quality measurement, and value-based care analytics. A data engineer who understands this terminology can design schemas that correctly capture patient conditions, procedures, and encounters — enabling accurate HCC scoring, HEDIS measure attribution, and CMS reporting. Misclassifying clinical fields in a data warehouse cascades into incorrect RAF scores and failed regulatory submissions.
Common uses in healthcare data
- Risk stratification and population health analytics
- CMS-HCC risk adjustment and RAF score calculation
- Quality measure attribution and HEDIS reporting
- Clinical data warehouse schema design
- Value-based care contract performance tracking
- Epic MyChart and Cerner PowerChart clinical data extraction for analytics pipelines
- Snowflake VARIANT column mapping for semi-structured HL7 FHIR clinical payloads
- Databricks Delta Lake pipeline orchestration for longitudinal patient cohort analysis
Related Healthcare Standards
HL7 FHIR R4
Defines clinical resource models (Patient, Condition, Observation, Encounter) that map directly to clinical data warehouse schemas and interoperability pipelines.
ICD-10-CM / ICD-10-PCS
The diagnosis and procedure coding systems mandated for all clinical documentation and claims in the US healthcare system.
HEDIS (NCQA)
Specifies clinical quality measure definitions that determine how clinical data is collected, attributed, and reported for Stars and value-based care contracts.
Data Quality Considerations
- ICD-10-CM codes are frequently entered with invalid trailing characters or missing decimal points — validate against the current CMS ICD code reference table before loading into your clinical data warehouse.
- Clinical date fields (admit date, discharge date, procedure date) often arrive with timezone offsets stripped — standardize to UTC at ingestion and store as TIMESTAMP_NTZ in Snowflake or TIMESTAMP in Databricks.
- Null vs. unknown must be distinguished in clinical data: a missing diagnosis code may mean 'not documented' rather than 'not applicable' — use explicit sentinel values and document the distinction in your data dictionary.
Related Content
Related Definitions
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