title: The National Capitol Region's Emergency Department syndromic surveillance system: do chief complaint and discharge diagnosis yield different results?
abstract: We compared syndromic categorization of chief complaint and discharge diagnosis for 3,919 emergency department visits to two hospitals in the U.S. National Capitol Region. Agreement between chief complaint and discharge diagnosis was good overall (kappa=0.639), but neurologic and sepsis syndromes had markedly lower agreement than other syndromes (kappa statistics 0.085 and 0.105, respectively).
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Begier
authors.forename: Denise
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sockwell
authors.forename: Leslie M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Branch
authors.forename: John O
authors.initials: JO
authors.lastname: Davies-Cole
authors.forename: LaVerne H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Leslie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Edwards
authors.forename: Julie A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Casani
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Blythe
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004219:District of Columbia; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D018805:Sepsis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000401:mortality / Q000503:physiopathology; D013577:Syndrome