Electronic health information quality challenges and interventions to improve public health surveillance data and practice.

Objective: We examined completeness, an attribute of data quality, in the context of electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) of notifiable disease information to public health agencies.

Methods: We extracted more than seven million ELR messages from multiple clinical information systems in two states. We calculated and compared the completeness of various data fields within the messages that were identified to be important to public health reporting processes.

Tuberculosis genotyping in six low-incidence States, 2000-2003.

Background: As tuberculosis incidence declines in the United States, a new tool for TB control efforts is Mycobacterium tuberculosis genotyping. Colorado, Iowa, Montana, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Wisconsin began routine genotyping of all culture-confirmed TB cases in October 2000.

Methods: M.

Tuberculosis cases in Wisconsin: documentation of treatment improvement and completion of treatment, 2000-2002.

Objective: In 2000, the Wisconsin Strategic Plan for the Elimination of Tuberculosis (TB) sets goals of 90 percent treatment completion and 95 percent documentation of treatment improvement for all reported cases of TB. This study measures the success in achieving these goals.

Methods: Data were abstracted from charts of all 249 reported TB cases during 2000-2002.

Evaluation of a two-step approach for large-scale, prospective genotyping of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates in the United States.

Genotyping of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates is useful in tuberculosis control for confirming suspected transmission links, identifying unsuspected transmission, and detecting or confirming possible false-positive cultures. The value is greatly increased by reducing the turnaround time from positive culture to genotyping result and by increasing the proportion of cases for which results are available. Although IS6110 fingerprinting provides the highest discrimination, amplification-based methods allow rapid, high-throughput processing and yield digital results that can be readily analyzed and thus are better suited for large-scale genotyping.

An outbreak of bronchoscopy-related Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections due to lack of bronchoscope leak testing.

Background: Bronchoscopy-related transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is rarely reported. In August 1999, five M tuberculosis-positive bronchial washing culture findings were noted in patients who underwent bronchoscopy in July in a hospital that reported only eight M tuberculosis-positive culture findings from 1995 to 1998, prompting further investigation.

Methods: A case was defined as a M tuberculosis-positive culture finding from specimens obtained from patients who underwent bronchoscopy during January to August of 1999.