An apparatus for automatically mapping a verbatim narrative to a term in a medical terminology dictionary includes a natural language processor and a comparator. The natural language processor processes terms from the medical terminology dictionary and from a medical coding decision database to generate a processed database that also includes the original terms from the medical terminology dictionary and the medical coding decision database. The natural language processor also processes the verbatim narrative. The comparator compares the processed verbatim narrative to the terms in the processed database and determines whether the processed verbatim narrative is an exact match to a term in the processed database. The verbatim narrative is mapped to the term in the medical terminology dictionary that corresponds to the term in the processed database that is an exact match. The verbatim narratives may include adverse event narratives, concomitant medication narratives, or other types of narratives. A method for automatically mapping a verbatim narrative to a term in a medical terminology dictionary is also described and claimed.