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Method to electronically collect emergency department data
M Schootman1, C Zwerling, E R Miller
1Division of Substance Abuse and Health Promotion, Iowa Department of Public Health, Des Moines.
Study Objective:
To describe the development and completeness of an electronic injury-surveillance system, the Rural Injury Surveillance System (RISS).
Methods:
The emergency departments of nine rural Iowa hospitals submitted information on all patients treated from May 1993 through June 1994.
Results:
The EDs submitted information on 23,594 patients with 32,445 different injury, disease, or follow-up visits. On the basis of comparison with the handwritten ED logbook, 90% of visits were also available in the RISS. Of the visits recorded in the RISS, 99% were also recorded in the logbook. The proportion of missing diagnostic codes decreased from a high of 22.6% in May 1993 to 8.1% in June 1994. The proportion of missing external cause codes was about 25% at the end of the study period. The proportion of missing industry and occupational codes was less than 5% at the end of the study period.
Conclusion:
Our findings show that complete, computerized, ED-based injury surveillance in rural EDs is possible and should be developed further.