On April 20, 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau hosted a meeting with approximately 20 representatives from the health data community. Attendees included representatives from health information exchanges (HIEs), state and local public health departments, health data associations, and the Department of Health & Human Services (see Appendix A for list of participants). The purpose of the meeting was to explore the potential for a joint Census-HIE initiative: specifically, data maintained at the Census Bureau would be matched to records maintained by HIEs.
Data Sharing
This presentation addresses the legal principles framing the collection, use, and release of health data for public health activities, including issues such as privacy, confidentiality, HIPAA, and data use agreements.
Presenter
Rachel L. Hulkower, JD, MSPH, Public Health Analyst, Public Health Law Program, in the Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
This report summarize the work of eight Regional Syndromic Surveillance Data Sharing Workshops that were held in Health and Human Services (HHS) Regions 1-7 and 10 from May 2013 through June 2015. The ultimate aim was to reach all ten HHS regions by June 2016.
Description
Washington State experienced a five-fold increase in deaths from unintentional drug overdoses between 1998 and 2014. The PMP collects data on controlled substances prescribed to patients and makes the data available to healthcare providers, giving providers another tool for patient care and safety. Optimal impact for the program depends on providers regularly accessing the information to review patients’ dispensing history. We have found through provider surveys and work with stakeholders that the best way to increase use is to make data seamlessly accessible through electronic health record systems (EHRs). This approach does not require a separate login to the PMP portal. This linkage works through the Health Information Exchange (HIE) to make PMP data available to providers via EHRs. The HIE facilitates electronic communication of patient information among organizations including hospitals and providers. In addition to the PMP, another resource to address the prescription drug abuse problem is the Emergency Department Information Exchange (EDIE), a web-based technology that specifically connects emergency departments statewide to track patients who visit multiple EDs. We also developed a connection between EDIE and PMP data through the HIE.
Objective
Demonstrate that use of the Washington State health information exchange (HIE) to facilitate access to prescription monitoring program (PMP) data enhances the effectiveness of a PMP. The increased accessibility will lead to improved patient care by giving providers more complete and recent data on patients’ controlled substance prescriptions.
The HHS Region 10 workshop engaged nine participants from state and local public health departments in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington with experience in syndromic surveillance that ranged from less than 1 year to over 10 years. Representatives from Alaska, which is also in HHS Region 10, were unable to participate. Because the participants did not have access to actual emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance data for sharing, the focus of the workshop was on building inter- jurisdictional understanding and sharing of practices.
Learning Objectives
Surveillance professionals from six states and one local public health agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Region 1 planned and attended the 2-day Workshop. Workshop attendees elected to explore how data sharing can support influenza-like illness (ILI) surveillance between regional jurisdictions, and the core activity on Day 1 focused on that purpose.
Learning Objectives:
The National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) conducted a three-part webinar series in 2016 to describe how data would flow to the BioSense Platform. This comprehensive series explored how data were to be ingested into the BioSense Platform and ESSENCE application and how BioSense 2.0 data were to be migrated.