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Syndromes

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) operates over 880 outpatient clinics across the nation. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory’s Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE) utilizes VHA ICD9 coded outpatient visit data for the detection of abnormal patterns of disease occurrence. The hemorrhagic illness (HI) syndrome category in ESSENCE is comprised of 25 different ICD9 codes, including 12 codes specific for viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) (e.g., ebola, yellow fever, CrimeanCongo hemorrhagic fever, lassa, etc.) and 13 nonspecific conditions (e.g., purpura not otherwise specified (NOS), thrombocytopathy, and coagulation defect NOS).

Objective

We sought to evaluate the functionality of the diagnosis codes which fall into the syndrome category of hemorrhagic illness.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

In WA, we've been using a series of increasingly broad queries to monitor measles. The number of visits mentioning measles increases during an outbreak as a result of people seeking care because they were (or think) they were exposed, seeking titers, vaccinations, or having seen reports of measles on the news and concerns than an illness could be measles. As a result, it is important to focus in on visits of highest suspicion as mentions of measles increase.

Submitted by Anonymous on

Objective: This is an updated to the All Traffic-related submitted in 2018. The goal is to capture all traffic-related injuries presenting for healthcare, regardless of intent or vehicle type, to allow monitoring of long-term trends in traffic-related injuries as well as short-term aberrations due to holidays, events, or weather.

Syndromic Surveillance System: ESSENCE (NSSP)

Data sources: Emergency Department and Outpatient Clinic Visits

Submitted by Anonymous on

Uploaded on behalf of Grace Marx, MD, MPH: Bacterial Diseases Branch, Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, CDC.

 

This syndrome definition was created to explore tick through Syndromic data as an efficient approach to monitor the tick-borne diseases and the utility of tick bite visits to predict the seasonal peak in Lyme disease.

This was created in NSSP ESSENCE, using the Chief Complaint Query Validation (CCQV) data to ensure a broad application across different states and jurisdictions.

Submitted by ZSteinKS on

Uploaded on behalf of Grace Marx, MD, MPH: Bacterial Diseases Branch, Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, CDC.

 

This syndrome definition was created to explore Lyme disease through Syndromic data as an efficient approach to monitor the disease. 

This was created in NSSP ESSENCE, using the Chief Complaint Query Validation (CCQV) data to ensure a broad application across different states and jurisdictions.

Submitted by ZSteinKS on

In winter, people are at risk for cold-related illness (CRI) such as hypothermia. Deaths coded as weather-related from 2006 through 2010 showed exposure to excessive cold as the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States.1 Therefore, the National Syndromic Surveillance Program Community of Practice (NSSP–CoP) worked with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) to create a standardized cold-related illness syndrome definition.

Submitted by elamb on

This syndrome was designed to capture rabies PEP visits and animal bites (excluding insect, human, snake, arachnid, and fish bites).

The query is designed using ESSENCE syntax (from the query portal)

The query is designed to be run against emergency department and urgent care center data by querying the chief complaint-discharge diagnosis (CCDD) field.

The query does not include ICD-10 or SNOMED codes (we receive textual descriptions of all discharge diagnoses), but the codes could certainly be added.

 

Submitted by Anonymous on
  • Why the syndrome was created? This syndrome was created to track falling related emergency room visits. 
  • Syndromic surveillance system (e.g., ESSENCE, R STUDIO, RODS, etc.) ESSENCE 
  • Data sources the syndrome was used on (e.g., Emergency room, EMS, Air Quality, etc.) Patient Location (Full Details) 
  • Fields used to query the data (e.g., Chief Complaint, Discharge Diagnosis, Triage Notes, etc.) CCandDD 
Submitted by Anonymous on

This syndrome attempts to capture Opioid, Cocaine and Meth Injection Drug Use hospital visits. The syndrome was developed using NSSP ESSNECE and evaluated on Maricopa County emergency department and inpatient data. Fields used in ESSENCE include Admit Reason Combo, Cheif Complaint History and Discharge Diagnosis.

Submitted by rkumar on
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