This report documents the development of the 2016 National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) Co-occurring Disorders Algorithm, which can be used to identify patients with an opioid-involved hospital encounter who had lifetime diagnoses of both a substance use disorder and a selected mental health issue. Lifetime diagnoses are defined as diagnoses at any point in the past or during the current encounter. This algorithm was created to complement the earlier NHCS Enhanced Opioid Identification Algorithm designed to improve the classification of patients with opioid-involved hospital encounters.
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