Achieving health equality is a national priority. The surveillance of health disparities in minority populations is key for the advancement of health equality. However, the need for improvement in documentation of race and ethnicity has been identified across various public health data sets. Currently, due to the lack of reporting of race and ethnicity in HDD, the NDHHS mainly depends on analyses of the statewide Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and Vital Records data for the surveillance of health disparities among minority populations. An alternative data set that might help inform the surveillance of health disparities is SyS data. This near-real–time electronic health record data is characterized by required core data elements that provide information about the date and time of patient encounter, treating facility, clinical information, and patient demographics. Previously, we demonstrated statistically significant correlations between the 2011 and 2012 NDHHS ED SyS and ED HDD data for ICD9-CM ECODES corresponding to motor vehicle crash related injury, which is a relevant cause of health disparities. Our new objective was to determine the reporting consistency of ICD9-CM ECODES associated with other injury related health disparities between 2013 NDHHS SyS and HDD ED data. We also sought to determine if near-real–time ED and IP SyS data provide a more complete documentation of race and ethnicity than HDD.
Objective
This pilot study evaluates Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (NDHHS) emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance (SyS) data quality by cross-validating reported external cause of injury codes (ECODES) associated to racial/ethnic injury health disparities in Nebraska. The percent completeness of core data elements in SyS data and hospital discharge data (HDD) was also determined.