EpiCenter, NJâs statewide syndromic surveillance system, collects ED registration data. The system uses chief complaint data to classify ED visits into syndrome categories and provides alerts to state and local health departments for surveillance anomalies. After the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) started collecting medical notes including triage notes, which contain more specific ED visit information than chief complaint, from 10 EDs to strengthen HAI syndromic surveillance efforts. In 2017, the NJDOH was aware of one NJ resident whose surgical site was infected following a cosmetic procedure outside of the US. This event triggered an intensive data mining using medical notes collected in EpiCenter. The NJDOH staff searched one week of medical notes data in EpiCenter with a specific keyword to identify additional potential cases of surgical-site infections (SSI) that could be associated with medical tourism.
Objective:
Medical notes provide a rich source of information that can be used as additional supporting information for healthcare-associated infection (HAI) investigations. The medical notes from 10 New Jersey (NJ) emergency departments (ED) were searched to identify cases of surgical-site infections (SSI).