General
The Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) extracts de-identified patient data from the electronic medical records of primary care practices across the country. CPCSSN applies cleaning, coding and standardization algorithms to transform raw EMR data into meaningful information that can be used for quality improvement, chronic disease surveillance, and research.
Participating clinicians can access their own data through bi-annual feedback reports, allowing for comparison of patients at various levels (e.g. other patients seen at their clinic, within the health division, and across the province). The Data Presentation Tool (DPT) is another way for physicians and clinics to undertake quality improvement initiatives.
Clinicians can learn details about their practice patterns (e.g. how often are SSRIs prescribed for depression management in younger patients). CPCSSN has developed algorithms to help identify over 13 conditions (e.g. depression, diabetes, osteoarthritis, Parkinson’s), which can assist in panel management and optimization. Re-identification of patients is possible only within the clinic environment; talk to your regional CPCSSN network for more instructions.
To become a member of CPCSSN, contact the regional network closest to you.
Once your practice has enrolled, data are automatically extracted from your practice’s EMR without any ongoing effort on your part. Periodically, CPCSSN may seek to make changes to the range of data collected or uses of collected data. In this situation, we will inform sites of potential changes and may seek your renewed consent to participate. At any time, practices can choose to end their participation in the study. Individual patients at participating sites can also opt out of CPCSSN and no data will be collected on these individuals.