Respiratory Rate

clinical

Updated 5/16/2026

Definition

A vital sign measurement recorded in breaths per minute and stored in EHR flowsheets, ADT feeds, and clinical observation tables. Data engineers use RR values to populate sepsis alerting models, validate ICU monitoring data pipelines, and support risk stratification in population health analytics systems.

Standard Abbreviation

Database Usage

-- Example column naming
CREATE TABLE claims (
  clm_id VARCHAR(50),
  rr INTEGER,  -- Respiratory Rate (count/integer value)
  ...
);

-- Example in SELECT
SELECT
  clm_id,
  rr as respiratory_rate
FROM claims;

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

Example database column name

ISO-11179 snake_case standard

-- Recommended column name
rr

-- Example DDL
CREATE TABLE healthcare_data (
  record_id   VARCHAR(50)   NOT NULL,
  rr           INTEGER,  -- Respiratory Rate (count/integer value)
  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.

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