Using data from its cloud-based EHR, athenahealth said flu season could come early this year.
The Boston area cloud EHR vendor crunched the numbers on primary care visits and determined the flu will be home for Christmas.
“We track approximately one million visits per week to 20,000 primary care providers around the country who are on our EHR,” Iyune Sung, director of research for athenahealth, wrote in a blog post. “Our latest data (for the week ending Saturday, November 22nd) shows that influenza-like illness (ILI) rates are beginning to rise across the country.”
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The data is illustrated in these charts:
The increase “is particularly high among children (birth-18),” according to athenahealth. “The percent of visits to pediatricians with a diagnosis of ILI increased from 2.8% to 3.5% last week alone. As a result, flu is more widespread among children this year than last and rapidly approaching rates seen in the difficult flu season of 2012-2013.”
Adults in the Midwest have seen a spike, as well.
All images from athenahealth.com