At the recent CSTE conference in Omaha, Teresa Hamby, MSPH, Data Analyst in the Communicable Disease Service of the New Jersey Department of Health & Senior Services prepared a poster outlining Syndromic Surveillance data collected during and after 2011’s Hurricane Irene.
Recent topics on our blog include some big changes in the way one state is securely sharing and sending information between healthcare providers—as well as a notification system that immediately lets a physician know when a patient has been admitted to an emergency room.
HMS is pleased to announce that Kern County, California, recently began utilizing EpiCenter as its county’s syndromic surveillance system.
Over 1,000 Public Health professionals are expected to attend The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists’ (CSTE) Annual Conference in Omaha. Kicking off on June 3, the conference is a 5-day event that includes workshops, sessions with Public Health leaders, breakout sessions, and roundtable discussions.
Meaningful Use is an opportunity for Public Health to benefit from an influx of valuable health data. But some Public Health departments are experiencing challenges as they attempt to implement Meaningful Use. We’ve received feedback from Public Health professionals nationwide, and the feedback always came back to one topic—making implementation simpler and more intuitive.
Physicians’ practices and hospitals in your region stand to gain financially when they comply with Meaningful Use—they’ll be eligible for Medicaid reimbursements.
And now, Public Health professionals are setting the groundwork that will make these reimbursements possible. Before valuable data can be collected from physicians and hospitals, a pipeline needs to be established for information flow—and that begins with a conversation between Public Health and the state Medicaid liaison.
EpiCenter users now have the opportunity to compare current data with historical data to gain a clearer perspective on potential threats to public health.
Andy Walsh, PhD, HMS Director of Public Health Solutions
The inclusion of syndromic surveillance reporting in the Meaningful Use requirements has created an unprecedented opportunity for the field. By crafting guidelines for how to define that reporting, the syndromic surveillance community can have a significant impact on the way that public health agencies and healthcare providers respond to that particular Meaningful Use objective. Therefore, it is important to consider the recently released draft guidelines for inpatient and ambulatory care data and assess whether they are moving things in the right direction.
Health Information Exchange (HIE) provides the opportunity for Public Health professionals to access a wider range of data—from Syndromic Surveillance to notifiable conditions, immunization, and health registries.
On March 7, 2012, Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements were released for public comment. The finalized requirements are expected this summer after the 60-day comment period expires.