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Triage Note in Emergency Department-Based Syndromic Surveillance

Description

The North Carolina Bioterrorism and Emerging Infection Prevention System (NC BEIPS) receives daily emergency department (ED) data from 33 (29%) of the 114 EDs in North Carolina. These data are available via a Web-based portal and the Early Aberration Reporting System to authorized NC public health users for the purpose of syndromic surveillance (SS). Users currently monitor several syndromes including: gastrointestinal severe, fever/rash illness and influenza-like illness. The syndrome definitions are based on the infection-related syndrome definitions of the CDC and search the chief complaint (CC) and, when available, triage note (TN) and initial temperature fields. Some EDs record a TN, which is a brief text passage that describes the CC in more detail. Most research on the utility of ED data for SS has focused on the use of CC. The goal of this study was to determine the sensitivity, specificity, and both positive and negative predictive value of including TN in the syndrome queries.

 

Objective

This study evaluates the addition of TN to syndrome queries used in the NC BEIPS.

Submitted by elamb on