Key Take Aways
- Working with InductiveHealth, the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) was able to effectively modernize its local syndromic surveillance system, offering increased confidence in using ESSENCE® data.
- Since RIDOH updated their system, acute care hospital emergency departments across Rhode Island have been onboarded and measurable improvements in data completeness and quality have been observed.
- Key program areas, including substance use epidemiology, violence and injury prevention, and environmental health, are utilizing Rhode Island ESSENCE® data to support their work.
Situation
Prior to working with InductiveHealth, the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) did not have a local system for ESSENCE®, and data completeness and quality varied by hospital.
Challenge
To more effectively identify abnormal health conditions and enable early detection and monitoring of events of public health importance, the Rhode Island Department of Health needed more complete and higher quality data from the 10 acute care hospital emergency departments across the state.
InductiveHealth Solution
A local Rhode Island ESSENCE® system was developed in July 2024, since which hospitals have been re-onboarded over time to the new system. The re-onboarding process has involved meeting with each facility and validating data reported to ensure that data are complete and accurate. Hospitals were also requested to report additional variables to the local system including patient name and address.
As of June 2025, with the help of InductiveHealth, all 10 acute care hospital emergency departments across Rhode Island are reporting data directly to Rhode Island ESSENCE® and patient identifiers (not passed on to the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP)) are being received from all facilities. Triage notes are being received from 4 out of 10 facilities (compared to only one prior to July 2024) and several improvements to data completeness and quality have been observed. For example, discharge diagnosis completeness notably increased from around 75% to 90% for one facility and from 75% to 97% for another. In total, chief complaints were available for approximately 99% of visits during June-July 2025 and discharge diagnoses were available for approximately 84% of visits.
The Impact of RIDOH’s ESSENCE® System
RIDOH and InductiveHealth anticipate further improvements to data quality, with another hospital system moving over to a new electronic health record system in October 2025. The observed improvements have given RIDOH increased confidence in using ESSENCE® data and several RIDOH program areas including substance use epidemiology, violence and injury prevention, infectious disease, and environmental health are utilizing ESSENCE® data to support their work.