Influenza Surveillance System with the Waco-McLennan County Public Health

District

By –Anand Gupta

Preceptor – Allison Sierocki

Department Head – Dr. Kahler Stone

Current Flu Reporting System.

Deadline for Reporting by Providers:• Monday by 3pm every week for the previous week( Sunday- Saturday)

Medium most commonly used for reporting. • Fax

Providers• Schools• Clinics• Daycare facilities• Assisted living facilities

Cases are reported to DSHS 7 on Monday before 5 pm

Current Flu Reporting System.

Assignments The following tasks were assigned for the practicum:

1. Collate the history flu data from 2009 till date on one excel file and create the Macros to auto-update the graphs.

2. Sort the current providers into two categories and see who is reporting to the department.

3. Create a Standard Operating Guidelines for the Flu Surveillance activity at the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District.

4. An optional assignment to improve the current contact database.

Deliverable 1 Collate the history flu data from 2009 till date on

one excel file and create the Macros to auto-update the graphs.

Used a previous excel file as a template.

Electronic reporting files were used to update the excel sheet.

Yearly tabs were created starting from week 35 of 2009 till week 34 of 2010 and so on till date.

(Ref: WeeklyFluActivityMontyUpdate_Final.xlsm)

Deliverable 1

Deliverable 1

Deliverable 1

Deliverable 1

Deliverable 2 Sort the current providers into two categories and

see who is reporting to the department.

They were sorted In two excel sheets with Schools & Daycares in one and the Hospitals& Clinics in another .

Two more excel sheets were created which Auto-generated various categories by the input provided.

(Ref: Clinic Hospital Providers.xlsx & Auto Clinic Hospital Providers.xlsx)

Deliverable 2

Deliverable 2

= IF('2015-2016 All'!G4= 0, 2, IF('2015-2016 All'!G4>0, 1, IF('2015-2016 All'!G4< 0, 0)))

Deliverable 2

Deliverable 3 Create a Standard Operating Guidelines (SOG) for

the Flu Surveillance activity at the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District.

The Texas Influenza Surveillance Handbook was used to create the SOG suited for the health department.

This SOG will give us the framework of our future operations.

(Ref: Standard Operating Guidelines for Influenza Reporting)

Deliverable 3

Standard Operating Guidelines PURPOSE

The SOG provided a guideline for the Waco- McLennan Health District (WMHD) to conduct both routine & passive surveillance activities for Influenza in the McLennan County.

  SCOPE

The Scope of this document is limited to the ways in which we can perform influenza surveillance in the Waco-McLennan Health District. Influenza surveillance is essential to:

Determine when and where influenza viruses are circulating Determine if circulating influenza viruses match the vaccine strains Detect changes in the influenza viruses Track influenza-like illness Develop, evaluate, and implement control and prevention

measures needed to respond to major influenza outbreaks.

Standard Operating GuidelinesInfluenza

Surveillance

Mortality

Pediatric Deaths by Influenza

Mortality Surveillance

Data

Morbidity

Flu

Provider data

Novel Influenza

ILI

ILI Activity

ILInet

Other

School Absenteeism

Outbreak

Viral

NREVSS

Laboratory

Standard Operating Guidelines Providers: WMHD receives weekly incidence reports of various

Influenza cases, ILI and Non-diagnosed (ND) influenza like conditions through a variety of means including fax, email, online survey system and electronic messaging from laboratories directly into the state surveillance system (Texas-National Electronic Disease Surveillance System, Tx-NEDSS).

Provider Responsibility: The Providers have to submit the weekly influenza reports

to the WMHD and report any increase in influenza cases in their facility or a novel case too. In the case of reporting schools and daycares the providers also should submit the absenteeism related to flu or ILI. This should be done in a timely manner in the method the provider is comfortable with i.e fax/ email/ online survey.

Standard Operating Guidelines Waco-Mclennan County Public Health District

responsibility: The Epidemiologists at WMHD are the primary personnel

responsible for maintaining the influenza surveillance records and reporting the DSHS of weekly influenza incidence reports.

1. Timely notifications have to be sent out to the providers for a better coverage of flu data.

2. Weekly review of new providers and potential providers by population.

3. Monthly plan for improving surveillance and a plan for recruiting new providers.

4. Investigate any special situations like outbreaks/ novel cases/ flu related mortalities.

5. Creating monthly Flu reports.

Standard Operating GuidelinesRecruit Providers

Friday - Weekly Reminder Notification

Providers give weekly Incidence Reports

Report DSHS with WMHD Influenza cases

Tuesday - Review Providers who sent/ did

not send report

Yes

Send a thank you email

No

Send 2 notifications/week

Provider Report next week

Yes

Send a thank you

email

No

Send 3 notification

s/ week

Process for Recruiting Providers

Incentives are methods to motivate reporting.

Recognition activities provide a mechanism for the health department to thank the reporter and highlight the importance of reporter participation.

Initiate and monitor reporting.

Provide the reporter with instructions and materials

Approach potential reporters via phone, email or fax.

Phone book and internet searches are also good tools to locate potential reporters in your jurisdiction. (eg. The Texas Medical Board website, Texas Education Agency, etc.)

Consider geographic and population coverage in your jurisdiction

Identify who currently submits regular influenza reports to you.

Additional objectives: Create an online survey to ask the providers

the most convenient way to report to us:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CG_aFoTEaPPA5TknJ45Ju9v9AzGFLB0n5NIlWrE4Ceg/viewform

Create an online reporting system to ease the process of reporting by providers:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1sdx9RIWsyrlvnmFaCHrpk3VyI-f_ahLxvPy6msUZU04/viewform

Also the contact database is being updated for the providers.

How can we use this?

Report to DSHS

3. Update WeeklyFluActivityMontyUpdate_Final.xlsm

4. Update Auto Clinic Hospital Providers.xlsx

2. Weekly notification with link

1. Survey

Dispatch emails to Providers

Update contact database

Recruit new providers

Benefits: Using the online reporting system we

have auto generation of excel sheets for a week.

After just copying the above to our Auto Clinic Hospital Providers.xlsx we get a auto weekly report for our providers.

Auto graph generation using WeeklyFluActivityMontyUpdate_Final.xlsm

These can be used to send our providers monthly reports with their performance in reporting.

Thank you