The advent of Meaningful Use (MU) has allowed for the expansion of data collected at the hospital level and received by public health for syndromic surveillance. The triage note, a free text expansion on the chief complaint, is one of the many variables that are becoming commonplace in syndromic surveillance data feeds. Triage notes are readily available in many ED information systems, including, but not limited to, Allscripts, Cerner, EPIC, HMS, MedHost, Meditech, and T-System. North Carolina’s syndromic surveillance system, NC DETECT, currently collects triage notes from 33 out of 122 hospitals in the State (27%), and this number is likely to increase.
Objective
This roundtable will provide a forum for the ISDS community to discuss the use of emergency department (ED) triage notes in syndromic surveillance. It will be an opportunity to discuss both the benefits of having this variable included in syndromic surveillance data feeds, as well as the drawbacks and challenges associated with working with such a detailed data field.