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ISDS 2012 Conference Abstracts

Evaluating Usefulness of Maine’s Syndromic
Surveillance System for Hospitals, 2012
Stefanie DeVita* and Amy Robbins

Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Maine CDC, Augusta, ME, USA

Objective
To assess the usefulness and acceptability of Maine’s syndromic

surveillance system among hospitals who currently participate.

Introduction
Maine has been conducting syndromic surveillance since 2007

using the Early Aberration Reporting System (EARS). An evaluation
of the syndromic surveillance system was conducted to determine if
system objectives are being met, assess the system’s usefulness, and
identify areas for improvement. According to CDC’s Guidelines for
Evaluating Public Health Surveillance Systems, a surveillance system
is useful if it contributes to the timely prevention and control of ad-
verse health events. Acceptability includes the willingness of partic-
ipants to report surveillance data; participation or reporting rate; and
completeness of data.

Methods

Results

a weekly basis, including a statewide data summary, as useful. Re-
spondents also recommended that data be shared back with partici-
pants using 30-day line graphs for each syndrome (4 respondents).
The three syndromes respondents found most useful were influenza-
like illness (7 respondents), gastrointestinal (5 respondents), and res-
piratory (5 respondents). The three syndromes respondents found
least useful were the broad heat syndrome (4 respondents), the nar-
row heat syndrome (4 respondents), and the other syndrome that cap-
tures all visits not classified into any syndrome (4 respondents). Chief
complaint data, which is used to classify emergency department vis-
its into syndromes, is most often recorded by a drop-menu (4 re-
spondents).

Conclusions
With a low survey completion rate, it is difficult to generalize re-

sponses to all hospitals who participate in syndromic surveillance.
Hospitals that did not respond to or complete the survey will be fol-
lowed up with to determine their reasons for not doing so, as this may
be useful information. In general, those who responded have more
factors that influence them to contribute to syndromic surveillance
than factors that hinder them. Most hospitals find the current method
of sharing data back with the hospitals useful. Also, it is advanta-
geous to know which syndromes the hospitals find most useful, as
they are the entities that collect and report the data. Opinions differ
among system users, which is why it is important to evaluate a sys-
tem throughout all points of interaction.

Keywords
Syndromic surveillance; Evaluation; Acceptability

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge those hospital partners who com-
pleted the survey.

References

Updated guidelines for evaluating public health surveillance systems.
(2001) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 50(RR13);1-35. Re-
trieved from
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5013a1.htm

*Stefanie DeVita
E-mail: stefanie.devita@maine.gov

     A survey was created in 2012 to measure usefulness and acce-
ptability among hospital partners who submit emergency depart-
ment data to Maine CDC for syndromic surveillance. Currently, 24 
of Maine's 37 emergency departments collect syndromic surveill-
ance data and 20 of those receive a weekly syndromic surveill-
ance report from Maine CDC. The survey was included with the 
report on August 14, 2012, and hospitals were given two weeks for 
completion. The survey included questions about how useful hos-
pitals find syndromic surveillance and how data is shared back with 
the hospitals; which syndromes are most and least useful; and chief 
complaint data collection at individual hospitals.

     The survey was completed by 13 out of 22 emergency departments
(59% participation rate), and six out of 13 respondents (46%) completed 
the entire survey. The factors reported as having an influence on a 
hospital's decision to submit data for syndromic surveillance were: 
public health importance of events (6 respondents) and assurance of 
privacy/confidentiality (5 respondents). The majority of respondents (5 
respondents) reported that there are no factors that limit their ability to 
send emergency department data. Among hospitals that did report 
factors that limit their ability to send data, lack of information 
technology support in the hospital (2 respondents) and manually entering 
data/lack of electronic health records (1 respondent) were the most 
frequently reported. Six out of seven hospitals who answered (86%) 
reported the current method of sharing syndromic surveillance data on  

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e174, 2013