Iowa Disease Surveillance System (IDSS)

The Iowa Disease Surveillance System (IDSS) enables local public health, hospitals, laboratories, and Iowa HHS to collaborate electronically as they perform disease reporting and surveillance activities across the state. IDSS was first implemented in the Center for Acute Disease Epidemiology (CADE) in October 2008 and is now widely used by hospital, laboratories, and public health agencies statewide.

Policy

IDSS Enhancements

Promoting Interoperability (formerly Meaningful Use) for Electronic Initial Case Reporting (eICR)

Electronic initial case reporting (eICR) is a new Meaningful Use objective that began in 2018. The state of Iowa uses the HL7 electronic initial case report (eICR) standards (R1.1 and R3) for electronic case reporting (eCR) and to support the new CMS Promoting Interoperability regulations for eCR. It is these standards that we will use to eventually eliminate manual reporting requirements. We also require the use of APHL AIMS and the Reportable Condition Knowledge Management System (RCKMS) to ensure appropriate reporting.

Promoting Interoperability (formerly Meaningful Use) for Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Meaningful Use Public Health Repository is not yet available. This repository is where public health agencies indicate meaningful use readiness and eligible hospitals (EHs), critical access hospitals (CAHs), and eligible professionals (EPs) declare their intent to pursue public health measures. This page will be updated and provide the link to the repository when the repository is available. 

Submission of Reportable Lab Results (electronic laboratory reporting or ELR) objective: capability to submit electronic data on reportable (as required by state or local law) lab results to PH agencies and actual submission in accordance with applicable law and practice.

Since 2014, significant progress toward implementing statewide ELR in Iowa has been achieved:

  • The majority of national reference laboratories used by Iowa hospitals and healthcare providers are sending laboratory results by ELR
  • The majority of Iowa hospitals (>75%) pursuing Meaningful Use that perform in-house testing are sending laboratory results by ELR
  • 2017 ELR initial reporting volume reached 95% of all laboratory result based reporting; direct entry into the Iowa Disease Surveillance System (IDSS) and paper based (fax or mail) reporting combined account for the remaining 5%.
  • The transition from paper-based reporting prior to 2009 to electronic reporting has reduced the time from known laboratory result to public health intervention from 10+ days to approximately 1 day on average which greatly improves timeliness of public health intervention.

Achieving Promoting Interoperability (formerly Meaningful Use)

For more information about IDSS contact:

For more information about Promoting Interoperability (formerly Meaningful Use), ELR, or eICR, contact: