Syndromic Surveillance for Emerging Infections in Office Practice Using Billing Data

The Article in Brief

Syndromic Surveillance for Emerging Infections in Office Practice Using Billing Data

Philip D. Sloane, MD, MPH, and colleagues

Background Syndromic surveillance is the monitoring of health data to identify possible outbreaks of diseases associated with bioterrorism or pandemic illness. Since patients often visit their primary care doctors when they first become sick, primary care practices could provide timely information, yet there has been little research on syndromic surveillance in primary care settings. This study tested whether it is practical to conduct syndromic surveillance in a primary care office using billing data.

What This Study Found This 1-year study of a primary care practice finds that it is practical to convert billing data into daily summaries of diagnosis codes, which can be used for rapid surveillance of disease patterns in a community. These systems can be easily implemented at a low cost and with minimal effort.

Implications

• Further development of syndromic surveillance systems should include primary care offices.
• This type of surveillance could be used to detect bioterrorism attacks and emerging infections, especially those that are not lethal and resemble common infections.
• Rapid conversion of primary care practices to electronic medical records opens up the possibility of new, potentially low-cost systems for early detection of emerging infectious diseases.