Urgency Related Groups and Urgency Disposition classification development

In February 2012, the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority's (IHACPA) Emergency Care Advisory Working Group (ECAWG) undertook a refinement of Urgency Related Groups (URG) and Urgency Disposition Groups (UDG) which resulted in the creation of Version 1.2 of these classifications. Version 1.2 was used in the determination of the National Efficient Price Determination 2012–13.

In October 2012, ECAWG undertook a subsequent refinement of Version 1.2 and added new categories relating to transfer presentations, died in emergency department presentations and modified categories relating to planned return visit presentations. This resulted in the creation of Version 1.3 of URGs and UDGs. Version 1.3 has been used in the determination of the National Efficient Price Determination 2013–14.

In 2013, IHACPA undertook a review to improve the clinical meaningfulness of the URG classification and its ability to explain differences in costs, as well as the mapping of diagnosis codes to major diagnostic blocks. This resulted in the creation of URG Version 1.4 which was used in the determination of the National Efficient Price Determination 2014–15.

URGs and UDGs were developed in 1992 by Dr George Jelinek based on studies of patients treated in emergency departments from Western Australian hospitals. The initial UDGs classified patients into 12 groups based on two variables: the episode end status (admitted or discharged) and level of urgency (triage category one to five). Similarly, the URG classification was developed as an extension of the UDG classification that utilised a third variable (major diagnostic blocks). This resulted in 73 URGs being formed.