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SYNDROMIC SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM

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ABOUT

What is Syndromic Surveillance?

Syndromic surveillance allows local and state public health officials to analyze events of public health interest, monitor healthcare data for events that could affect public health, and share data and analyses. These events include infectious/non-infectious disease, weather surveillance, and mass gathering events. Syndromic surveillance gives public health the ability to monitor disease indicators in near real-time to detect clusters of disease earlier than traditional public health methods. When patients use a healthcare service (in this case, a hospital/urgent care center), their de-identified information is submitted to the BioSense (cloud-based) Platform and accessed by the public health community.

 

ONBOARDING

As of January 4, 2016, all emergency rooms and urgent care centers in the state must report syndromic data for registered patient visits to the state daily to the Bureau for Public Health (BPH). The reporting requirements are explained in the relevant part of the Reportable Disease Rule (§64-7-12) pertaining to syndromic surveillance in West Virginia. Those who fail to report may be subjected to administrative and/or criminal penalties.

Facilities wishing to submit data to the BPH should contact Jessica Hoffman to initiate the Onboarding Process.

The purpose of syndromic surveillance is to receive near real-time patient information, including demographic and diagnostic information. Currently, the BPH requires a daily submission rate of 95% or better to be placed into the live (Production) environment. Epidemiologists will work with facilities and their IT teams to ensure data quality. The following documents provide guidelines for sending HL7 v.2.5.1 compliant messages from emergency department and urgent care settings to public health authorities.

 

PROMOTING INTEROPERABILITY (PI)/QUALITY PAYMENT PROGRAM (QPP)

Declaration of Readiness Statement

(Posted January 30, 2024) The West Virginia Syndromic Surveillance Program will continue accepting syndromic surveillance registrations under the Promoting Interoperability Programs or the Quality Payment Program for the remainder of the 2024 reporting period and continuing with the 2025 reporting period. It is the registrant’s responsibility to know the requirements of the particular Federal Rule under which you are registering and reporting.

Eligibility Criteria

  • Is the facility an eligible hospital (EH), critical access hospital (CAH), or an urgent care center with three or more EP/ECs?
  • Does the facility have a certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) system? Contact your EHR vendor to determine if your system is or will be certified for syndromic surveillance reporting.

Registration

  • IMPORTANT NOTE TO EPs/ECs: West Virginia is NOT accepting syndromic surveillance registrations from EPs/ECs unless the EP/EC practices in an urgent care setting. Only those EPs/ECs in an urgent care setting with THREE OR MORE EPs/ECs should register.
  • If you are an urgent care center with three or more EPs/ECs, you are eligible to register, and you should enter one registration for the facility. Do not enter registrations for each EP/EC.
  • If you previously registered for syndromic data reporting and your registration status was "In Review," "Registered - In Queue," "First or Second Invitation," "Testing and Validation Queue," or "Production" at the end of 2023, you do not have to register again. Your previous registration will continue in 2024.
  • It is not the responsibility of the West Virginia syndromic surveillance team to know your certification status, your reporting period registration deadline, or whether your reporting period is the full 2024 calendar year or any 90-day period in 2024.
  • After you submit your registration, the Registration Status will indicate "In Review" in the Meaningful Use Registration System, and your primary contact will receive an e-mail confirmation indicating that the registration was successfully saved.
  • IMPORTANT NOTE: The facility is responsible for keeping their registration up to date and transferring login credentials in the case of staff turnover. The BPH is not able to alter registration or login information. The facility should also keep a record of all communications received from public health throughout the registration, onboarding, testing, and production process, as well as any other documentation that may be needed for attestation or auditing purposes. Examples may include e-mails, screen shots providing date of registration, acknowledgement letters, etc. Due to the large volume of registrants, public health programs will not have the capacity to prepare such a log on your behalf.
  • The BPH encourages all providers and EHR vendors to coordinate with the West Virginia Health Information Exchange (HIE) to establish a connection to BioSense for secure data transmission. If a provider does not wish to establish a connection to the HIE, the provider should contact Jessica Hoffman for instructions to connect directly to BioSense.

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