Syndromic surveillance is a Menu set objective for EPs and a Core objective for EH/CAHs.
Select the Syndromic Surveillance button below to learn more.
Syndromic surveillance systematically uses health and health-related data in near "real-time" to make information on the health of a community available. Information includes patient encounter data from health care settings, statistics on health trends, community health needs, epidemiological studies, and other health studies.
Hospitals provide clinical data to PHAs for all patient encounters (not a subset), and PHAs use data authorities granted to them by applicable local and state laws.
Syndromic surveillance:
- Enhances local, state, and Federal PHAs for public health situation awareness, emergency response management, and outbreak recognition
- Enables early detection of disease outbreaks through the use of real-time clinical data and analysis to mitigate outbreaks
- Involves analyzing patient chief complaint information as patients present for care in hospital emergency rooms, other acute care settings, and primary care practices
- Attempts to bring together a variety of data from both clinical and community settings to support decision-making in the event of a disaster or emergency, rather than relying strictly on confirmed reports of disease or condition occurrence
Quick and efficient transmission of critical clinical data to appropriate local, state, and Federal PHAs improves surveillance success, and electronic submission of syndromic surveillance data enables more rapid responses to address public health risks.
