support function. The ability of U.S. primary care practitioners to evaluate their practice and compare it with those of other physicians around the world relates directly to their ability to use the ICPC terminology in association with the NCVHS core terminology group.

With regard to patient safety, the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine and numerous other organizations are involved in a collaborative project entitled Applied Strategies for Improving Patient Safety. This project, sponsored by AHRQ to analyze the causes and effects of adverse events in primary care and reduce the incidence of errors, is using ICPC as its classification system (Pace, 2003). Preliminary results are not available at this time.

A conceptual diagram of the core terminology group and associated mappings to supplemental terminologies is presented in Figure 4-4, which shows the possible relationships among the terminologies and the use of aggregation logic for mapping through various levels of granularity. This figure was developed as a modification of a presentation in August 2002 to

FIGURE 4-4 Conceptual diagram of the core terminology group and mappings to supplemental terminologies.

SOURCE: Adapted from Campbell, 2002.