The CDC National Healthcare Safety Network: Planned Changes and Improvements and the Impact of State Mandates and CMS Rules

Key Objectives:
 

1. Present major NHSN updates, changes, and improvements that have been recently deployed or that are planned for the system.

1. Review how advancements in electronic reporting, as well as mandates and rules from states and CMS affect NHSN and drive some of the changes.

1. Discuss the impact these changes have on data collection, entry, analysis, and reports.

Brief Summary:
The collaborations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Team has with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provide important momentum for advances in healthcare-associated infection (HAI) surveillance at the local, state, and federal levels.  The work that has been accomplished and new efforts underway continue to extend NHSN’s capacity to produce accurate and valid surveillance data for effective prevention of HAIs in a variety of healthcare settings.  As a result of state and CMS requirements, NHSN has emerged as the primary system used for HAI surveillance and reporting in the U.S.  This development, in turn, has led to important changes and improvements to NHSN.  These changes have been implemented for the purposes of reducing subjectivity, maximizing standardization, preventing data entry errors, improving simplicity and completeness of data entry, and more accurately defining the facility types and locations from which data are reported.  Major enhancements include revisions and additions to better standardize HAI criteria, definitions, and risk adjust metrics for comparative purposes, improve capability for electronic data capture and reporting of HAI and antimicrobial use and resistance data, and expand output options for analysis and reports.  The NHSN system is continuously stabilized with architecture upgrades, which also include enhancements for improved reporting.  All revisions serve to improve the user interaction and experience with NHSN and the completeness and quality of the data that are analyzed and reported out of the system.  During this session users will be asked to provide feedback and input on current and future enhancements to the NHSN system.  The impact of state mandates and CMS rules to users, stakeholders, and the system will be discussed as a group.  The intent is to make this an informative and interactive NHSN presentation and discussion.