1. Put the CGI-DRG executable into whatever directory your web server expects to find it. C:\Inetpub\WWWRoot\Scripts is common, as is C:\Inetpub\WWWRoot\cgi-bin. If you have installed CGI-DRG correctly, you will be able to run the program and get the appropriate form, but you won't be able to assign a DRG yet because CGI-DRG won't be able to find the masks files.

2. Create a directory on your web server into which to put the masks files. For example, you might create "D:\MNH\DRG".

3. Copy your masks files into the masks directory.

4. Create a URL to call CGI-DRG. For instance, one of our test servers is called "w2k-server" and runs Windows 2000. We put the masks in D:\MNH\DRG and CGI-DRG.EXE in the scripts directory, so the URL on our system is: http://w2k-server/scripts/cgi-drg.exe/d:/mnh/drg

 C:\MNH\SA-DRG>sa-drg
 

 drgfilt f15 drgmasks.f15 cntl.f15 < input > output
 

 drgfilt (c) 1989-2001 M+H Consulting LLC. (f15)
 Usage: drgfilt [-0|1] version masksfile cntlfile
 

1. recl was introduced with DRGFilt f16. If you don't specify a record length with "recl" then DRGFilt assumes that its input is a text file and that each line of the text file is a record. If you do specify a record length, then DRGFilt reads its input in chunks as big you specified, ignoring end-of-line markers.

2. dflg is short for "diagnosis flags." It is possible that for any given input record some of the diagnosis codes will be ignored as irrelevant to the group into which the record ultimately falls. In order to report which diagnosis codes were used and which were not, our grouper keeps a list of flags, one per diagnosis, of upto 16 diagnoses. These flags are boolean, which means that they are either zero, meaning "this code was not relevant," or one, meaning "this code was relevant." If you use the dflg keyword, your output will have a string of ones and zeros in it which tell you, in order, which diagnosis codes were used and which were not.

3. sflg is short for "surgery flags" because, once upon a time, "surgery" and "procedure" were synonymous. See the note on "dflg" for an explanation of the code flag data type. If you use the sflg keyword, your output will have a string of ones and zeros in it which tell you, in order, which procedure codes were used and which were not.

 # DRGFilt control file for federal testdb
 # there are 3 columns: name, offset and length
 # --------------------------- input fields
 age  000 03
 sex  003 01
 ds   004 02
 dxl  000 06
 dx   006 60
 sgl  000 07
 surg 066 70
 # --------------------------- output fields
 drg  195 03
 mdc  198 02
 rc   200 01
 #
 #'dflg' stands for "DX Flags" and 'sflg' stands
 # for "Surgery Flags". (In ancient times, we called
 #"Procedures" "Surgeries").
 #
 # these are bit-strings by which we mean strings
 # of 1's and 0's. Each element of the string
 # corresponds to a code. So the fifth element of
 # dflag corresponds to the fifth Dx code.
 #
 # If an element is 1, then the corresponding code was
 # used in the DRG assignment. If 0, then not.
 #
 # dflg represents all the DX codes.
 dflg 201 10
 # sflg represents all the Procedure codes.
 sflg 211 15
 # M or P attribute of the DRG that was assigned.
 # Actually, either "Medical" or "Procedure" will be
 # spelled out, depending on how long you make the
 # output length.
 morp 226 01
 

• Error 1 means EITHER that there were no diagnosis codes given or that the given principal dx code does not have an MDC (ie is not valid as a principal dx).
• Error 2 means no DRG could be found to match MDC and principal dx.
• Error 3 means that the given age was not between 0-124.
• Error 4 means that the given sex was not 1=male or 2=female
• Error 5 is no longer used; Discharge Status is defaulted depending on various factors (disposition status coding system, eg)
• Error 6 depends on various factors; for example, for some DRG versions this means that birthweight was not between 200 and 9000 grammes.
• Error 7 means that the principal dx code was not a valid choice as a primary diagnosis; the code may be valid, but it is not an allowed starting point for assigning a DRG.
• Error 8 means that the DRG masks file could not be found or initialized by the run-time environment.
• Error 9 means that the DRG to be labelled is too high for the specified DRG version
• Error 10 means that the DRG masks file has internal structural errors.