A Cross-sectional Survey to Assess Awareness of Syndromic Surveillance by Clinicians Practicing Emergency Medicine: An Opportunity for Education and Collaboration

Introduction: Syndromic surveillance (SyS) is an important public health tool using de-identified healthcare discharge data from emergency department (ED) and urgent care settings to rapidly identify new health threats and provide insight into current community well-being. While SyS is directly fed by clinical documentation such as chief complaint or discharge diagnosis, the degree to which clinicians are aware their documentation directly influences public health investigations is unknown. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the degree to which clinicians practicing in Kansas EDs or urgent care settings were aware that certain de-identified aspects of their documentation are used in public health surveillance and to identify barriers to improved data representation.Methods: We distributed an anonymous survey August –November 2021 to clinicians practicing at least part time in emergency or urgent care settings in Kansas. We then compared responses from...
Source: Western Journal of Emergency Medicine - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Source Type: research