Can We Use Syndromic Surveillance Data to Identify Primary Care Visits to NYC EDs?

Authors

  • Jessica Athens New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v5i1.4577

Abstract

A primary care (PC) syndrome was developed to estimate the number of primary care-related visits to emergency departments (EDs) in New York City and explore predictors of these visits. The PC syndrome included referrals, screenings, wound care, or medication refills. A hierarchical model with a hospital-level random intercept was used to explore patient characteristics - duplicate visit, patient gender and age, and time of visit - associated with PC syndrome visits. In NYC, 7.5% of ED visits in 2011 were PC syndrome visits. Despite undercounting, the relationships between our predictors and PC syndrome visits were consistent with published literature.

Author Biography

Jessica Athens, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Jessica Athens received her doctorate in Population Health Sciences from the University of Wisconsin (2012). She also earned master's degrees in Population Health (2008) and Urban Planning (2005) from UW. She has worked with the International Food Policy Research Institute; the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment, and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. She currently works with the New York City Department of Health as an analyst in syndromic surveillance.

Downloads

Published

2013-03-24

How to Cite

Athens, J. (2013). Can We Use Syndromic Surveillance Data to Identify Primary Care Visits to NYC EDs?. Online Journal of Public Health Informatics, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v5i1.4577

Issue

Section

Oral Presentations: Novel Uses of Syndromic Data