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The Florida Department of Health works to protect, promote, and improve the health of all people in Florida through integrated state, county, and community efforts.

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Syndromic Surveillance (ESSENCE-FL)

​​Welcome to the Florida Department of Health Syndromic Surveillance page!

​Syndromic surveillance is the monitoring of patient syndromes (collections of symptoms) reported by medical facilities to public health agencies. The Florida Department of Health conducts syndromic surveillance in order to detect and assess disease outbreaks and health trends.

Can my health care facility participate?

Emergency departments and urgent care facilities can and should participate!

How do I get started?

To start sending syndromic surveillance data to the Florida Department of Health, eligible hospitals and urgent care facilities should do the following:

  1. Complete the Registration of Intent.

  2. Complete a Memorandum of Understanding and submit it to MUSyndromicSurveillance@flhealth.gov.

  3. Begin the testing process.

Once we receive your online registration, your facility will be put into a queue. Testing is prioritized based on the order that we receive online registrations as well as facility patient volume. Please allow one week for a response; an email will be sent to your information technology contact with test message submission instructions. In the meantime, please check out the following resources:

What should I know about earning Promoting Interoperability credit?

Emergency departments and urgent care facilities can earn credit for participating in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Promoting Interoperability (PI) program by submitting electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies in HL7 2.5.1 format.*

*Currently, the Florida Department of Health is not accepting syndromic surveillance data from other types of eligible professionals (EPs). Non-hospital or non-urgent-care EPs needing to justify a claim for a PI program exclusion should click here.

Where can I send an email for follow-up questions?

Send your inquiries to MUSyndromicSurveillance@flhealth.gov.