One of the first county-wide syndromic surveillance systems in the nation, the Syndromic Tracking and Reporting System (STARS) has been in operation since 11/01/2001, and now covers Hillsborough, Pinellas and Collier counties. STARS uses hospital emergency department visit data to detect aberrations of non-specific syndromes and serves as an earlier warning system for public health threats. Patient’s syndrome is collected upon arrival, separately from routine collection of clinical and administrative data; but in some hospitals the process is being streamlined with routine data collection. Aberration detection is done twice daily using the statistical system EARS developed by the CDC. Upon flagging of an aberration, follow-up investigation is conducted to verify cases, and identify source of exposure following a sequence of decision procedure. After several years of operation and some instituted enhancements, a systematic evaluation was called to (1) assess if STARS has met the operation specifications and (2) characterize system efficacy and effectiveness.
Objective
To evaluate STARS with respect to quality of syndrome diagnoses, timeliness and completeness of data collection and processing, performance of aberration detection methods, and aberration investigation.