Physician surveillance of influenza: collaboration between primary care and public health.
OBJECTIVE
Influenza-like illness (ILI) is a global and national concern. The surveillance of ILI requires collaborative efforts from many diverse settings, including primary care clinics.


OBJECTIVE
To develop a sustainable reporting mechanism that enables primary care practices to provide ILI surveillance information to public health (PH) and addresses the needs of primary care practices and PH.


METHODS
An automated, electronic ILI reporting program that collects information on ILI activity directly from family physicians; the program is integrated with the practice's electronic medical record (EMR) system and therefore does not require physician initiation or disrupt physician workflow. Surveillance information is collected from a random sample of patient encounters using an automated pop-up screen that appears when exiting the patient's EMR. Weekly summary reports are transmitted electronically to PH.


CONCLUSIONS
The EMR-integrated physician ILI reporting program is a simple and inexpensive way for family physicians to provide PH with important real-time, community-level disease surveillance information that is both complete and accurate. The program has been used in Hamilton, Ont, since 2004, which clearly demonstrates that it is a feasible and sustainable program in practice.
Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, McMaster Innovation Park, 175 Longwood Rd S, Suite 201A, Hamilton, ON L8P 0A1. priced@mcmaster.ca.
David
D
Price
David
D
Chan
Nancy
N
Greaves
D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D018563:Disease Notification / Q000379:methods; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D005194:Family Practice / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009864:Ontario / Q000453:epidemiology; D062486:Public Health Surveillance / Q000379:methods*