Syndromic Surveillance

Introduction The US Department of Health and Human Services has mandated that after October 1, 2015, all HIPAA covered entities must transition from using International Classification of Diseases version 9 (ICD9) codes to using version 10 (ICD-10) codes (www.cms.gov). This will impact public health surveillance entities that receive, analyze, and report ICD-9 encoded data. Public health agencies will need to modify existing database structures, extraction rules, and messaging guides, as well as syndrome definitions and underlying analytics, statistical methodologies, and business rules. Implementation challenges include resources, funding, workforce capabilities, and time constraints for code translation and syndrome reclassification. To address these challenges, the International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS), in partnership with the CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), conducted a project to develop consensus-driven syndrome definitions based on ICD10 codes. Over 130 newly created ICD-9 to-ICD-10 mappings and corresponding syndromic definitions were fully reviewed and vetted by the syndromic surveillance community, which relies on these codes for routine surveillance and research purposes. The final mappings may be leveraged by other federal, state, and local public health entities to better prepare and improve their surveillance, analytics, and reporting activities impacted by the ICD-10 transition.