Evaluation of the secondary use of electronic health records to detect seasonal, holiday-related, and rare events related to traumatic injury and poisoning.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The increasing adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems enables automated, large scale, and meaningful analysis of regional population health. We explored how EHR systems could inform surveillance of trauma-related emergency department visits arising from seasonal, holiday-related, and rare environmental events.

Methods

We analyzed temporal variation in diagnosis codes over 24 years of trauma visit data at the three hospitals in the University of Washington Medicine system in Seattle, Washington, USA. We identified seasons and days in which specific codes and categories of codes were statistically enriched, meaning that a significantly greater than average proportion of trauma visits included a given diagnosis code during that time period.

Results

SUBMITTER: Bergquist T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6958939 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature