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Using Discharge Diagnoses for Early Notification of Reportable Diseases in Georgia

Description

The Georgia DPH has used its State Electronic Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (SendSS) Syndromic Surveillance (SS) module to collect, analyze and display analyses of ED patient visits, including DDx data from hospitals throughout Georgia for early detection and investigation of cases of reportable diseases before laboratory test results are available. Evidence on the value of syndromic surveillance approaches for outbreak or event detection is limited. Use of the DDx field within datasets, specifically as it might be used for investigation of outbreaks, clusters, and / or individual cases of reportable diseases, has not been widely discussed.

Objective:

To describe how the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) uses ICD-9 and ICD-10-based discharge diagnoses (DDx) codes assigned to Emergency Department (ED) patients to support the early detection and investigation of outbreaks, clusters, and individual cases of reportable diseases.

Submitted by elamb on