Disease surveillance is a core public health (PH) function. To manage and adjudicate cases of suspected notifiable disease, PH workers gather data elements about persons, clinical care, and providers from various clinical sources, including providers, laboratories, among others. Current processes often yield incomplete and untimely reporting across different diseases requiring time-consuming follow-up by PH to get needed information [1,2]. To improve the completeness and timeliness of case reporting, health departments have explored accessing EHR systems, which are increasingly available. We examine whether providing PH with EHR access to gather notifiable disease case information affects data completeness.
Objective
To assess the effect of electronic health record (EHR) system access on notifiable disease case data completeness.