Novel Use of a National Case Reporting System for Data Delivery and Case Notification

BACKGROUND: This project describes an exciting collaboration between two offices within the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, several Local Health Departments (LHDs), and a National Reporting Review Coalition to improve data access for the purpose of Infant and Child Death Review.   Members from our Health Informatics and Vital Records team created a novel data linkage program to automate data uploads into the Case Reporting System that jurisdictionally-appropriate LHD employees can view and download.  With this process, our statewide reporting rate into the Child Death Review Case Reporting System should improve from approximately 40% to nearly 100%.   

METHODS: Our informatics team met with employees from Local Health Departments, non-profit agencies in the state, and advocates from multiple fetal/infant mortality review teams to determine the current status of vital record data access, and recognize obstacles and barriers to the flow of jurisdictional data.  After pinpointing barriers and reviewing privacy issues, we identified a national database to serve as a data repository that meets standards for confidentiality and jurisdictional security.

RESULTS: Our Office of Health Informatics collaborated with our Division of Maternal and Child Health to create a process of data extraction, linkage, upload and case notification.   This novel usage of the Child Death Review Case Reporting System (CDR) to provide secure information to LHDs may be used in other fields to improve data sharing to LHDs, and provides case notification in a more reliable and standardized format compared to previous case notification.   The data upload at the State level is expected to decrease duplicate work by Local Health Department employees, and has the potential to decrease errors in data entry.   

CONCLUSIONS: The extraction and linkage of pertinent data fields from death and birth records will be uploaded into the CDR on a regular basis, and followed with a secure email to inform predetermined LHD employees of their available cases.      This novel partnership may be used as a model to improve timely access to linked death and birth record data for case ascertainment and notification for LHDs and to improve the statewide rate of participation in the voluntary Child Death Review Case Reporting System.  This process will serve two concurrent functions.   First, LHDs will now have timely access to linked death and birth record data for case ascertainment for infant and child death review.  Second, duplicate data entry by LHD employees should be nearly eliminated and the potential for data entry errors reduced.