When a reportable condition is identified, clinicians and laboratories are required to report the case to public health authorities. These case reports help public health officials to make informed decisions and implement appropriate control measures to prevent the spread of disease. Incomplete or delayed case reports can result in new occurrences of disease that could have been prevented. To improve the disease reporting and surveillance processes, the Utah Department of Health is collaborating with Intermountain Healthcare and the University of Utah to electronically transmit case reports from healthcare facilities to public health entities using Health Level Seven v2.5, SNOMED CT, and LOINC. As part of the Utah Center of Excellence in Public Health Informatics, we conducted an observation study in 2009 to identify metrics to evaluate the impact of electronic systems. We collected baseline data in 2009 and in this paper we describe preliminary results from a follow-up study conducted in 2010.
Objective
This paper describes a comparison study conducted to identify quality of reportable disease case reports received at Salt Lake Valley health department in 2009 and 2010.