Can We Use Syndromic Surveillance Data to Identify Primary Care Visits to NYC EDs?

A primary care (PC) syndrome was developed to estimate the number of primary care-related visits to emergency departments (EDs) in New York City and explore predictors of these visits. The PC syndrome included referrals, screenings, wound care, or medication refills. A hierarchical model with a hospital-level random intercept was used to explore patient characteristics - duplicate visit, patient gender and age, and time of visit - associated with PC syndrome visits. In NYC, 7.5% of ED visits in 2011 were PC syndrome visits. Despite undercounting, the relationships between our predictors and PC syndrome visits were consistent with published literature