In December of 2020, the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network launched the COVID-19 Vaccination modules to allow healthcare facilities to report vaccination data on their personnel. NHSN is the nation’s most widely used healthcare infection tracking system and serves approximately 25,000 medical facilities in the US.
The COVID-19 vaccination module was intended to assist organizations in not only identifying coverage gaps but also to ensure consistent reporting of the vaccination data over time. Reporting has now become required for a number of CMS Hospital Quality programs, and a final rule was published to the federal register in August of 2021. Beginning October 1st, 2021 facility types that are part of the Inpatient Quality Reporting Program, PPS-exempt cancer hospital quality reporting program, Inpatient psychiatric facility quality reporting program, Inpatient rehabilitation facility quality reporting program, or Long-term acute care quality reporting program will be measured on their submission through the NHSN Weekly COVID-19 vaccination module. This was later finalized for the Outpatient Quality Reporting and Ambulatory Surgical Center Quality Reporting programs beginning January 1st, 2022.
For successful attestation, organizations must collect the data for at least one self-selected week during each month of the reporting quarter and submit for each facility. Failure to meet minimum reporting requirements could result in a decrease to your CMS annual payment update. While this may seem straightforward, the operational undertaking of collecting the data amongst several departments for employees and non-employees is not a small task for an organization of any size. In talking with several healthcare organizations, many are managing this process through a combination of several excel spreadsheets and disparate data sources. Without a standardized solution organizations not only have to allocate more resources but also run the risk of inaccurate reporting.
Luckily, TrackMy is here to assist with VeriVax’s dynamic NHSN reports. Not only does VeriVax remove the burden of manual collection and review of the vaccine documentation, but also includes embedded reports that include all the necessary data to make NHSN a seamless process for your organization. With any CMS or healthcare regulatory reporting it’s important to understand the impact and evaluate CMS program participation for each facility. It’s also vital to establish a program owner to ensure someone is responsible for gathering the data across departments in a timely manner to submit data on time. TrackMy is excited to offer advisory services to help alleviate financial risk and provide guidance to streamline the manual collection efforts many are dealing with today. This includes working with your stakeholders to design reports specific to your population and provide documentation templates in the event of an audit. Our ultimate goal is the reduction in resource allocation and to ensure the accuracy of your monthly submissions.
For more information related to the National Healthcare Safety Network COVID-19 vaccination modules and requirements please visit the CDC website.
