Fostering Governance and Information Partnerships for Chronic Disease Surveillance: The Multi-State EHR-Based Network for Disease Surveillance.

Context: Electronic health records (EHRs) are an emerging chronic disease surveillance data source and facilitating this data sharing is complex.

Program: Using the experience of the Multi-State EHR-Based Network for Disease Surveillance (MENDS), this article describes implementation of a governance framework that aligns technical, statutory, and organizational requirements to facilitate EHR data sharing for chronic disease surveillance.

Implementation: MENDS governance was cocreated with data contributors and health departments representing Texas, New Orleans, Louisiana, Chicago, Washington, and Indiana through engagement from 2020 to 2022.

A process to deduplicate individuals for regional chronic disease prevalence estimates using a distributed data network of electronic health records.

Introduction: Learning health systems can help estimate chronic disease prevalence through distributed data networks (DDNs). Concerns remain about bias introduced to DDN prevalence estimates when individuals seeking care across systems are counted multiple times. This paper describes a process to deduplicate individuals for DDN prevalence estimates.

Estimating costs of hospitalizations associated with opioid use disorder or opioid misuse at a large, urban safety-net hospital-Denver, Colorado, 2017.

Introduction: The national and state economic burden of the opioid crisis is substantial. This study estimated the number of hospitalizations associated with opioid use disorder (OUD) or opioid misuse (OM) and the cost of those hospitalizations at Denver Health (DH) Medical Center, a large, urban safety-net hospital.

Methods: For 2017, direct inpatient medical costs for hospitalizations associated with OUD or OM at DH Medical Center were estimated and categorized by group and insurance type.

Evaluating Population Coverage in a Regional Distributed Data Network: Implications for Electronic Health Record-Based Public Health Surveillance.

Objective: Electronic health records (EHRs) hold promise as a public health surveillance tool, but questions remain about how EHR patients compare with populations in health and demographic surveys. We compared population characteristics from a regional distributed data network (DDN), which securely and confidentially aggregates EHR data from multiple health care organizations in the same geographic region, with population characteristics from health and demographic surveys.

Methods: Ten health care organizations participating in a Colorado DDN contributed data for coverage estimation.

Geospatial Monitoring of Body Mass Index: Use of Electronic Health Record Data Across Health Care Systems.

Objectives: The Colorado BMI Monitoring System was developed to assess geographic (ie, census tract) patterns of obesity prevalence rates among children and adults in the Denver-metropolitan region. This project also sought to assess the feasibility of a surveillance system that integrates data across multiple health care and governmental organizations.

Materials And Methods: We extracted data on height and weight measures, obtained through routine clinical care, from electronic health records (EHRs) at multiple health care sites.