The homelessness syndrome was developed to identify emergency department visits in ESSENCE for patients who are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. The syndrome is intended for use with chief complaint, triage notes, and discharge diagnosis codes (ICD-10 CM). The definition heavily relies on diagnosis codes primarily used by non-critical access hospitals and artificial exclusion of critical access facilities should be considered when data are interpreted.
Arkin-Long Kristin
This query is used to assess trends in hypothermia or cold exposure in emergency department visits in ESSENCE. The query captures cold exposure, hypothermia, and frost bite using chief complaint, triage note, and discharge diagnosis code (ICD-10CM). The query does not exclude hypothermia related to an underlying medical condition.
The attached query was developed to track medication refill encounters in emergency departments in ESSENCE during evacuations or extended mass gathering events. The query was initially developed for use with the chief complaint, triage note, and discharge diagnosis code (ICD-10 CM).
Description
The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse in Idaho was anticipated to lead to a large influx of visitors in many communities, prompting a widespread effort to assure Idaho was prepared. To support these efforts, the Idaho Syndromic Surveillance program (ISSp) developed a plan to enhance situation awareness during the event by conducting syndromic surveillance using emergency department (ED) visit data contributed to the National Syndromic Surveillance Programâs BioSense platform by Idaho hospitals. ISSp sought input on anticipated threats from state and local emergency management and public health partners, and selected 8 syndromes for surveillance. Ideally, the first electronic message containing information on an emergency department visit is sent to ISSp within 24 hours of the visit and includes the chief complaint for the visit. Data on other variables, such as diagnosis codes, are updated by subsequent messages for several days after the visit. Chief complaint (CC) text and discharge diagnosis (DD) codes are the primary variables used for syndrome match; delay in reporting these variables adversely affects timely syndrome match of visits. Because our plan included development of new syndrome definitions and querying data within 24 hours of visits, earlier than ISSp had done previously for trend analysis, we sought to better understand syndrome performance.
Objective:
In August 2017, a large influx of visitors was expected to view the total solar eclipse in Idaho. The Idaho Syndromic Surveillance program planned to enhance situation awareness during the event. In preparation, we sought to examine syndrome performance of several newly developed chief complaint and combination chief complaint and diagnosis code syndrome definitions to aid in interpretation of syndromic surveillance data during the event.
Description
Standard syndrome definitions for ED visits in ESSENCE rely on chief complaints. Visits with more words in the chief complaint field are more likely to match syndrome definitions. While using ESSENCE, we observed geographic differences in chief complaint length, apparently related to differences in electronic health record (EHR) systems, which resulted in disparate syndrome matching across Idaho regions. We hypothesized that chief complaint and diagnosis code co-occurrence among ED visits to facilities with long chief complaints could help identify terms that would improve syndrome match among facilities with short chief complaints.
Objective:
We sought to use free text mining tools to improve emergency department (ED) chief complaint and discharge diagnosis data syndrome definition matching across facilities with differing robustness of data in the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) application in Idahoâs syndromic surveillance system.