Inaccuracies in Billing Codes for Pediatric Inguinal Hernia Repair Across 20 U.S. Hospitals

Data accuracy and reliability are essential in clinical bioinformatics and clinical research. Billing codes are often used to query large healthcare datasets and to identify study subjects, but little is known about the accuracy of coding, as it often does not undergo quality review. No prior studies have evaluated the accuracy of Common Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes in pediatric inguinal hernia repair (IHR), a commonly performed pediatric operation. In conducting a multisite retrospective cohort study of pediatric inguinal hernia repairs, we found that there was a wide range of inaccuracies in CPT codes for pediatric IHR.