ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2018. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution,  
and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ISDS 2018 Conference Abstracts

Justification for Collecting Urgent Care Data to 
Broaden Syndromic Surveillance
David J. Swenson*2, Em Stephens1, Samuel P. Prahlow3 and Adejare Atanda4
1Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, VA, USA; 2New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, Concord, NH, 
USA; 3Florida Department of Health, Tallahassee, FL, USA; 4Maryland Department of Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

Objective
Provide justification for the collection and reporting of urgent care 

(UC) data for public health syndromic surveillance.

Introduction
While UC does not have a standard definition, it can generally be 

described as the delivery of ambulatory medical care outside of a 
hospital emergency department (ED) on a walk-in basis, without a 
scheduled appointment, available at extended hours, and providing 
an array of services comparable to typical primary care offices.1 UC 
facilities represent a growing sector of the United States healthcare 
industry, doubling in size between 2008 and 2011.1 The Urgent Care 
Association of America (UCAOA) estimates that UC facilities had 
160 million patient encounters in 2013.2 This compares to 130.4 
million patient encounters in EDs in 2013, as reported by the National 
Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.3 Public Health (PH) is 
actively working to broaden syndromic surveillance to include 
urgent care data as more individuals use these services.4 PH needs 
justification when reaching out to healthcare partners to get buy-in 
for collecting and reporting UC data.

Keywords
Urgent Care; Syndromic Surveillance; data collection

Acknowledgments
Many thanks to all the ISDS CoP jurisdictions and others who shared 
their UC knowledge and experiences in the February 24th 2017 CoP 
UC webinar and Question and Answer session, and to those who have 
participated in the UC Justification workgroup conference calls. Special 
thanks go to Rich Thomas, Anna Waller, Serena Rezny, Stacey Hoferka, 
and Sophia Crossen.

References
1. Urgent Care Association of America. Industry FAQs. Retrieved from

http://bit.ly/2lEZTtK
2. Urgent Care Association of America. (2014). The Urgent Care

Association of America Unveils New Accreditation Program. PR
Newswire. Retrieved from http://prn.to/2wPcQXh

3. Rui P, Kang K, Albert M. National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care 
Survey: 2013 Emergency Department Summary Tables. Retrieved
from: http://bit.ly/2yhLgoG

4. Centers for Disease Control and Surveillance. (2015). The National
Syndromic Surveillance Program: Enhancing Syndromic Surveillance 
Capacity and Practice. FOA: CDC-RFA-OE15-1502. Retrieved from 
http://bit.ly/2yFXwRa

*David J. Swenson
E-mail: David.Swenson@dhhs.nh.gov

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 10(1):e51, 2018