As hospitals comply with the meaningful use requirement regarding notifiable disease reporting, the amount of data sent to public health departments will double, according to a study in the Online Journal of Public Health Informatics.
Meaningful use stage 2 requires hospitals to electronically submit laboratory data for reportable disease cases to local health departments. In the study, researchers examined the amount of laboratory data processed by the Indiana Network for Patient Care, which processes about 90 percent of the region's laboratory reports and sends cases meeting reporting criteria to state and local health departments. The researchers project similar reporting models and volumes to be in place once hospitals meet the disease reporting requirement of meaningful use stage 2.
Researchers found the volume of notifiable disease reports sent by the INPC were twice the national average, suggesting the volume of data sent to other local health departments will double once meaningful use stage 2 has been widely achieved.
This increase in data sent to local health departments is predicted to further strain the departments' resources, according to the study's authors.
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