Most patients with vertigo receive unspecific diagnoses, delaying treatment and causing unnecessary tests. Training primary care (PC) physicians is essential to improve accuracy. This study evaluates the effectiveness of an online training program with a face-to-face session on new specific diagnoses in PC.
Structured coding training for primary care physicians may reduce vague or unspecific dizziness diagnoses; audiologists and ENTs who receive referrals from primary care should be aware that upstream coding quality directly affects referral pathways and epidemiological data.
Improving vertigo/dizziness coding accuracy in primary care strengthens the referral pipeline to audiology and vestibular specialists and enhances population-level data quality.
- 01Cluster-randomized design randomly assigned primary care clinics to receive vertigo/dizziness coding training or standard practice.
- 02Primary outcome was improvement in diagnostic coding accuracy and reduction of unspecific dizziness labels.
- 03Community-based setting increases generalizability across typical primary care environments.
- 04Better upstream coding can improve referral appropriateness to audiology and vestibular clinics.
- 05Findings have implications for administrative datasets and epidemiological tracking of vestibular conditions.
Training primary care physicians on vertigo/dizziness coding improves diagnostic accuracy.
studypartially supportedTraining reduces unspecific dizziness diagnoses in primary care records.
studypartially supported- PMID
- 42260492
- DOI
- 10.1186/s12909-026-09645-2.
- Journal
- BMC Medical Education
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 1b
- Population
- Primary care physicians in community-based clinics
- Intervention
- Structured training on vertigo/dizziness diagnostic coding
- Comparator
- Standard practice (no coding training)
Primary outcomes
Diagnostic coding accuracy for vertigo/dizziness; Rate of unspecific dizziness diagnoses