TB Surveillance Overview

Summary

Perhaps no other single task is more time consuming than managing TB surveillance. The program enables you to fully meet the CDC Guidelines for testing, record-keeping, and reporting information related to TB testing and exposure, while easily handling reminders. The program can also deal with the different situations you encounter in managing TB surveillance: people who don't come back to have their TB skin test read, people with a history of positive TB skin test readings, Two-Step TB skin tests, people on TB drug therapy, etc. You can even run compliance reports by department, and identify who, specifically, is out of compliance, both at the individual and department levels.

The program manages TB surveillance the same way it manages all surveillance: you define the rules for follow up, then the software executes those rules to ensure surveillance is completed on time. For routine surveillance, you set up medical activity codes with repeat frequency rules for all the items you track that are related to TB surveillance: TB skin test testing, TST questionnaires, anergy testing, chest X-rays, etc. These medical activity codes and rules will enable you to send reminders for these items and document when they have been completed.

If in your part of the country, some employees require TB skin test testing more frequently than others, you can set up a TB Risk Category to differentiate which departments and/or job classes should receive TB skin tests more frequently, such as every 6 months. (If everyone gets TB skin tests only once/year, it is not necessary to set up a TB Risk Category; you can manage the surveillance completely with the medical activity rules).

When a conversion occurs, you document the conversion as an incident (so that it shows up on your OSHA log) and define the follow-up either based on an exposure follow-up protocol that you have established, or using routine surveillance rules. Which you do depends on whether or not the employee is symptomatic.

For purposes of Conversion Rate Reporting, you should also set up an "illness" on the Medical Conditions table that is called something like TB skin test Conversion or TB skin test Reactor. You will need an illness code for the calculations and, of course, it would be inappropriate to use TB itself, since TB skin test conversion is not an indication of active TB. When completing this illness code setup, you should have the TB skin test medical activity linked to it, as explained in Medical Conditions.

What Do You Want To Do?

FAQs related to TB skin tests

  1. When I enter a TB skin test, a window pops up (such as respirator fit test) that is not related to it. How do I stop this from happening?

    The medical activity is not set up properly. The Trigger Entry field needs to be changed. Select the option TB Skin Test for the TriggerEntry field instead of what is now selected. See TB skin test and Questionnaire Setup for details.

  1. Don't I need one medical activity for a one-step TB skin test and another one for a two-step TB skin test? How do I know where I am in the two-step process?

    No! You will manage the two-step process with one TB skin test code and differing result codes that will let you know where you are. See TB skin test and Questionnaire Setup.

  1. When I enter TB skin tests, there is no way to check that a conversion occurred.

    Your TB skin test code may be set up properly (check this by reviewing TB skin test and Questionnaire Setup), but you also need to have the "illness" TB skin test Reactor (or some similar name) set up as a medical condition, with the TB skin test linked to it as the Diagnostic Test. See Medical Conditions.

Set Up for TB skin test Testing

Document TB skin tests

Reports and Letters

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