Relationship Between Baseline Influenza-like Illness Rates And Healthcare Settings

The primary goal of syndromic surveillance is early recognition of disease trends, in order to identify and control infectious disease outbreaks, such as influenza. For surveillance of influenza-like illness (ILI), public health departments receive data from multiple sources with varying degrees of patient acuity, including outpatient clinics and emergency departments. However, the lack of standardization of these data sources may lead to varying baseline levels of ILI activity within a local area.

Objective

To examine the baseline influenza-like illness (ILI) rates in the emergency departments (ED) of a large academic medical center (AMC), community hospital (CH), and neighboring adult and pediatric primary care clinics.