Influenza assessment centres: a case study of pandemic preparedness to alleviate excess emergency department volume.

Objectives: Influenza assessment centres (IACs) were deployed to reduce emergency department (ED) volumes during the pH1N1 influenza outbreak in the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (KFL&A) public health region of Ontario, Canada, in the fall of 2009. We present a case study for the deployment of IACs to reduce ED visit volume during both periods of pandemic and seasonal communicable disease outbreak.

Methods: An emergency department syndromic surveillance system was used to trigger the deployment of eight geographically distributed IACs and to time their staggered closure 3 weeks later.

Real-time surveillance for respiratory disease outbreaks, Ontario, Canada.

To validate the utility of a chief complaint-based emergency department surveillance system, we compared it with respiratory diagnostic data and calls to Telehealth Ontario about respiratory disease. This local syndromic surveillance system accurately monitored status of respiratory diseases in the community and contributed to early detection of respiratory disease outbreaks.