Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine Preventable Diseases



Current Issues and Immunization Conference SeriesMy name is Megan Lindley. I’m the lead subject matter expert for Healthcare Personnel Influenza Vaccination Reporting through NHSN and I work in the Immunization Services Division at CDC. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Agasha Katabarwa. I am a subject matter expert here at NHSN working on the Healthcare Personnel Vaccination module.My name is Elizabeth Kalayil and I work as a contractor in the Immunization Division at CDC. I will be presenting information during this webinar. So welcome everyone to the Healthcare Personnel Safety Component Training Session for the Influenza Vaccination Summary of the Healthcare Personnel Vaccination Module. This presentation will cover several topics. The first objective is to review the reporting of healthcare personnel influenza vaccination summary data through the National Healthcare Safety Network, or NHSN, by acute care facilities. Next, we will review the Healthcare Personnel Safety Component in NHSN and reporting requirements. We will then go over the changes that acute care facilities will need to make when reporting healthcare personnel flu vaccination summary data for the 2018-2019 influenza season. After this, we will review some key points about data entry in light of the new reporting requirements. Please note that we will not be reviewing step-by-step instructions on data entry, as this presentation is geared toward facilities that have previously submitted healthcare personnel influenza vaccination summary data through NHSN. For guidance on how to enter and submit data, please consult the Comprehensive Training slide set that is posted on the NHSN website. The final section of the presentation will review frequently asked questions. We will now talk about the reporting of healthcare personnel influenza vaccination summary data by acute care facilities in NHSN. So over the years there have been several changes to the reporting of healthcare personnel influenza vaccination summary data by acute care facilities. These facilities were first required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, to report healthcare personnel influenza vaccination summary data for inpatient units through NHSN as part of the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program beginning in January 2013. For the 2013-2014 influenza season, data for inpatient units covering the entire influenza season were required for submission. For the 2014-2015 influenza season, CMS added a requirement for acute care facilities to report data on outpatient units, in addition to inpatient units. Just recently in November of 2018, CMS eliminated the requirement for acute care facilities to report data on outpatient units. Therefore, data for the 2018-2019 influenza season should only cover inpatient units. We will now briefly review the Healthcare Personnel Safety Component and reporting requirements for the Healthcare Personnel Vaccination Module. There are two modules within the Healthcare Personnel Safety Component, the Healthcare Personnel Exposure Module and the Healthcare Personnel Vaccination Module. The influenza vaccination summary is located within the Healthcare Personnel Vaccination Module. Staff members and healthcare facilities can use the module to monitor influenza vaccination percentages among healthcare personnel. Data are collected on denominator and numerator categories. To be included in the denominator, healthcare personnel must be physically present in the facility for at least one working day between October 1st through March 31st. This includes both full-time and part-time healthcare personnel. There are three required denominator categories: employees, licensed independent practitioners, and adult students, trainees, and volunteers. Facilities are required to collect data on influenza vaccinations, medical contraindications, declinations, and unknown status for the numerator categories. Each facility must report all numerator categories for the three required denominator categories. So this slide reviews a few points about the reporting requirements. Facilities are only required to report data once at the conclusion of the reporting period. Healthcare personnel who are physically present in the healthcare facility for at least one working day between October 1st through March 31st are included in the denominator. Therefore, healthcare personnel always working off site or out of state should not be counted since they are not physically working in the facility. Healthcare personnel in the denominator population who received an influenza vaccination during the time from when the vaccine became available, for example, August of September through March 31st of the following year are counted as vaccinated in that category numerator since influenza vaccine for a given influenza season may be available as early as August or September. Please note that the denominator categories are mutually exclusive. The numerator data are to be reported separately for each of the denominator categories. It is important to remember that the numerator data are mutually exclusive. The sum of the numerator categories should be equal to the denominator for each healthcare personnel group. Now we will review how acute care facilities should count healthcare personnel for the 2018-2019 influenza season. In terms of healthcare personnel who acute care facilities must include in their data, facilities will continue to count all healthcare personnel who physically work in the acute care facility from October 1st through March 31st while meeting NHSN protocol definitions. Facilities should include healthcare personnel working in units of the inpatient acute care facility with the same CCN. Healthcare personnel should be included if they work in units that are considered part of the inpatient acute care facility site, regardless of the size or type of unit. Now we will talk about healthcare personnel who should not be included in the data reports for the 2018-2019 influenza season. Please note that you would not count healthcare personnel working in hospital outpatient units or separate outpatient satellite clinics. In addition, patient care units within the acute care facility having separate CCNs would not be included. Some examples of these are listed on the slide. However, if any of the healthcare personnel listed on this slide also physically work in the inpatient acute care facility for at least one day between October 1st through March 31st, then you would include these individuals in your acute care facility counts. So for example, if a physician works in both a hospital outpatient department and the inpatient acute care facility during the reporting period, then you would include he or she in your acute care facility counts. Even with these changes, there are several facility types that are still required to report data through NHSN if they are subject to CMS or Health Resources and Services Administration reporting requirements. In addition to inpatient reporting for acute care facilities, the other facility types are as follows: critical access hospitals, Prospective Payment System-Exempt cancer hospitals, long term acute care facilities, and inpatient rehabilitation facilities. The deadline for reporting these data for the 2018-2019 influenza season is May 15th of 2019. We’ll now go over a few key points about healthcare personnel influenza vaccination summary data entry in NHSN. Even with the recent changes from CMS, the monthly reporting plan screen remains unchanged in NHSN. Please note that only hospitals who have a CMS IRF unit or CMS IPF unit mapped within their NHSN facility will see a different NHSN screen when adding a monthly reporting plan. This involves entering the IRF specific or IPF-specific CCN into NHSN. To add a monthly reporting plan, click on “reporting plan” and then “add” on the navigation bar. Hospitals with IRF or IPF units will also need to select the correct month and year from the drop-down menus. So for example, if you’re reporting data for the 2018-2019 flu season, you can select October 2018 for your monthly reporting plan. Each hospital or unit should check the appropriate box for influenza vaccination summary under the Healthcare Personnel Vaccination Module. So for example, to report data on inpatient units for the hospital, you would check ‘Influenza Vaccination Summary for the Hospital.’ To report data for inpatient rehabilitation unit that is part of the facility you would check “Influenza Vaccination Summary for Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Units.” To report data for an inpatient psychiatric unit that is part of the facility, you would check “Influenza Vaccination Summary for the Inpatient Psychiatric Facility Units. Hospitals IRF units or IPF units will also need to click save after making the appropriate selections. Once the reporting plan has been completed for one month, as shown in the example, no other reporting plans need to be added for that flu season. Also, please be aware that CMS suspended the requirement for inpatient psychiatric facilities to report healthcare personnel influenza vaccination summary data through NHSN beginning with the 2018-19 season. However, the option for IPFs to report these data is still available if facilities wish to voluntarily report data to NHSN or if they are required by their state or locality to submit data through NHSN. This slide shows what hospitals without CMS certified IRF or IPF units will see on their screen in NHSN when adding a monthly reporting plan. To add a monthly reporting plan, click on reporting plan and then add on your navigation bar. Select the correct month and year from the drop-down menus. So again, if you’re reporting data for the current flu season, you can select October 2018. It’s very important to correctly submit your monthly reporting plan and this includes identifying the correct flu season. Please note that reporting plans that identify the wrong flu season will not allow your data to be submitted to CMS. The user should check the box in the Influenza Vaccination Summary under the Healthcare Personnel Vaccination Module. After making the appropriate selections, the user should click save. Once an individual reaches the data entry screen, IRF units or IPF units will have a slightly different view when adding healthcare personnel influenza vaccination data. The user must complete all fields marked with an asterisk on the page. Influenza and seasonal are the default choices for vaccination type and influenza subtype. The user would then select the appropriate flu season in the drop down box. For example, if you’re reporting data for the current flu season, please select 2018-2019 in the drop down box. Facilities can always contact NHSN if they are unsure which flu season is currently being reported. The user should select the appropriate location from the drop down box. For example, to report data on inpatient units for the hospital, you would select hospital. To report data for an inpatient rehab unit that is part of the hospital, you would select IRF units. And to report inpatient psychiatric units that are part of the hospital, you would select IPF units. Please note that to report data for hospital units IRF and IPFs, a summary report should be submitted for each. As with the monthly reporting plan, please note that this screen is what all other facilities will see in NHSN when adding influenza vaccination summary data. You must complete all fields marked with an asterisk on the page. Influenza and seasonal are the default choices for vaccination type and subtype. The user should select the appropriate flu season in the drop down box. I will now briefly go over some frequently asked questions pertaining to the change in reporting requirements. The first question is: I am reporting data for my acute care facility and for my CMS IRF unit that has a separate CCN from the acute care facility. How should I report my data now that the acute care facility reporting requirements have changed? You should still continue to report your data separately for the IRF unit. Healthcare personnel working only in the IRF unit should be counted in the IRF unit report, but not in the acute care facility report. Healthcare personnel working in both the IRF unit and the acute care facility should be counted in both the IRF unit and acute care facility reports. The second question is: I used to report data for my CMS IPF unit that is located within my acute care facility. How should I report data now that CMS has suspended the requirement for IPFs to report data through NHSN? Healthcare personnel only working in the IPF unit should not be counted in the acute care facility report. The healthcare personnel do not have to be reported to NHSN for CMS purposes, although reporting may be required for your state or locality. Healthcare personnel working in both the IPF unit and in other units of the inpatient acute care facility should be counted in the acute care facility report.The third question is: Our facility has an administrative building that is physically connected to the acute care facility by a skywalk. The building is only used for administrative duties and not inpatient care. Should I count healthcare personnel working in this building? You should not count healthcare personnel working in the administrative building unless they also physically work in the inpatient acute care facility that is located on the other side of the skywalk.The fourth question is: Our facility has an outpatient surgery unit that is physically part of the inpatient acute care facility. Should I include individuals working in this outpatient unit? The answer is no. Since this is considered an outpatient department, you would not include these individuals unless they also physically work in an inpatient acute care facility unit from October 1st through March 31st. The fifth question is: My acute care hospital owns several outpatient provider practices that are physically separate from the main hospital campus. Employees of the clinics are on the hospital’s payroll. Should I include them in our reporting? These employees should not be counted in the vaccination reports for the acute care hospital unless these employees also physically work in the inpatient acute care hospital for at least one day from October 1st through March 31st. The sixth question is: Should employees who always work off-site or out-of- state be counted, such as employees practicing telemedicine? The answer is no. Only healthcare personnel physically working in the inpatient acute care facility for at least day or more from October 1st through March 31st are included in your counts.The seventh question is: My facility is finding it difficult to distinguish healthcare personnel who only work in the outpatient units versus those who work in inpatient units. How should I move forward? We realize that collecting these data can be challenging, and we encourage you to do your best with this task. If you are unable to determine precisely which healthcare personnel physically work in the inpatient acute care facility for one day or more from October 1st through March 31st, you could consider including healthcare personnel who you reasonably suspect will be in the inpatient facility at least once during the influenza season. For example, this may include patient transporters and food delivery staff. However, facilities should develop methods to better identify and track these healthcare personnel for future reporting periods.Facilities can visit the NHSN website using the link on the slide. The website contains links to the protocol, data collection forms, frequently asked questions, and training slides. Please note that the comprehensive training slides include more detail on topics such as NHSN enrollment, how to activate the Healthcare Personnel Safety Component and data analysis features. Facilities who are new to this process may find it helpful to refer to the slides.If you have any questions about NHSN, please send an e-mail to user support at NHSN@. You should also include ‘HPS flu summary’ in the subject line of the e-mail and specify ‘acute care’ as this will help us to better assist you.This concludes the slide presentation for this webinar. Now we’ll have the opportunity to answer any questions from webinar participants.While we’re waiting for the questions to come through, we did receive several questions in the chat queue, so I’m just gonna start running through those. If you entered your question in the chat queue, you do not need to hit 1 to ask your question live, we’ll answer it now and I’ll try to give your name so you know that we got the question. So Lindsay Trockler asked would we include IPFs if housed in the hospital; the CCNs are different. So I think Elizabeth answered this in the presentation. Inpatient psychiatric facility reporting is no longer required, so for personnel that work only in the IPF, you would not include them in the counts for the acute care facility. We got the same question from Janet Reese and Monica Hemming. I’m sorry, no, Monica’s question was are inpatient psychiatric hospitals still able to voluntarily report? The answer to that is, yes, they are. The reporting capability is there, but the data will not be shared with CMS. And related to this question, Kara Cruise asked what is IRF and IPF? IPF is an Inpatient Psychiatric Facility and IRF is an Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility or unit within an acute care facility. Dustin, do we have questions in the queue now or should I continue with the written questions?Yes. Our first question is from Stacey Martin. Go ahead, your line is open.This doesn’t really have to do with the summary but it’s an overall question. CMS said that by 2020 we need to be 90% vaccinated, so is that the 2019-2020 season or the 2020-2021 season?This is Megan. Are you referring to the Healthy People 2020 Objective of 90% healthcare personnel vaccination?Yes.So those are, I’ll say, aspirational objectives to achieve public health goals. To my knowledge—well, I shouldn’t speak for CMS, we can’t do that because it’s a separate agency. To my knowledge, those are not requirements of CMS. It’s simply a goal for healthcare personnel of facilities to try and reach. Okay, so that goal, is it the 2020-2021 season or the 2019-2020?Technically, the Healthy People goals are written for calendar years, which I realize is confusing in the case of influenza vaccination because it crosses over a calendar year, but those objectives refer to calendar year 2020.Okay, thanks.Our next question is from Anna Cobb. Go ahead, your line is open.If we have outpatient facilities and they come to the inpatient side for meetings like once or twice a month, are we to count them in the report?Yes, that’s a good question. So when we say working in the inpatient unit of the acute care facility, we mean performing a work-related duty, so that could be patient care, but it could also be entering the facility for required meetings or trainings. So, yes, you would count those people.Thank you.Our next question is from Heather Oppenheimer-Smith. Go ahead, your line is open.My question is applicable to the outpatient surgical centers. We have a outpatient surgery center attached to our hospital and they also perform surgeries on any of our inpatients. We should report them as they provide care for inpatients, or I should not report them?Hmm. So you’re saying that hospital inpatients go to an outpatient unit for surgery, or that the surgeons from that unit enter the inpatient space?They are our only OR, and so our surgery center is attached to the hospital and the inpatients go there for surgery.So in that case, I would say that you would report those personnel because it’s not, as you said, there’s not a separate unit providing surgical services to the inpatients.Thank you.Our next question is from Christine Gilbet. Go ahead, your line is open.Hey, how are you? . Technically, the emergency department is an outpatient department, but they do respond to, say a code about a patient, or obviously they’re transporting patients from the ED to our inpatient units. How do we classify those employees?Thank you. So, yes, as you said, the emergency departments are considered outpatient units. I think in a lot of emergency departments, the healthcare personnel that work there are also working in the inpatient unit, so as was mentioned in the presentation if they do work in the inpatient unit, and that would include doing things like patient transport, you would include them in your inpatient report and there are several folks who asked that question in the chat box, so please just know if you asked in the chat box about emergency departments, I’m going to delete your question now because that was the answer. If you do have personnel that work only in the ED because it is considered outpatient, you do not report them but, again, as you just referenced, that’s fairly uncommon.Okay, thank you so much for the clarification.Our next question is from Linda Floyd. Go ahead, your line is open.Hey. I just wondered about if we have an outpatient area that’s across the street from us and the people come over to use like the cafeteria or maybe a meeting but they’re really just walking through the halls because our meetings are in the administrative part of the building, they’re not in the hospital part, would I count them?No. Having lunch or just passing through the hall and not actually doing a work duty would not count.Our next question is from Dana Masa. Go ahead, your line is open.(No response).Our next question is from Rhonda McKana. Go ahead, your line is open.I wondered if you would please explain slide #10 again, please.So basically, this talks about how to report the denominator categories. So if you have healthcare personnel who may fit a couple of different categories, you should include them only in one category. For example, there could be someone who’s considered as an employee who also fits the category of a student if they’re shadowing for a program that they’re in, so basically you wouldn’t count anyone in two categories. And when you sum the denominator categories, they should be equal to your total number of healthcare personnel, so if you have let’s say 20 healthcare personnel, five of those could be employees, five of those could be LIPs, five adult students, or ten student trainees and volunteers, so that should add up to the number 20. And then the same is basically for the numerator, so you would be able to tally up your vaccinations received at the healthcare facility, vaccinations received outside the facility, medical contraindications, and that should equal the number in your denominator. Does that clarify the slide?Yes, ma’am, I think so.Great, thank you.Dustin, can I read off a few more of the chat questions before we take more that are in queue from the phone?Yes, go right ahead.Just trying to knock them out. We’ve got a lot. So a couple of people, Laura Goss and Amy Reilly asked about the reporting plan, so it does not matter what month you choose. The example uses October. You could use March 2019, December 2018, whatever you want, as long as the month is within the influenza season. And to Amy Reilly’s question, yes, you only enter one reporting plan for one month and the system will auto-populate the plan so that you only have to enter data for the entire season. A question from Roxanne Huddleston asks: If I am a critical access hospital, do the new requirements apply? Yes, the requirements for critical access hospitals for the MB QIP reporting are the same as what is used for non-critical access short-stay acute care facilities, so this does apply to you as well. I just wanted to clarify, we have some questions that were variations on the emergency department question about outpatient infusion therapy from Don Canterbury, urgent cares from Eric Fargus, we had some questions about observation units and things like that, and the answer is the same for all of those. Any unit that is considered outpatient, which it sounds like all of those are, if the personnel work only in that unit, you do not include them in the reporting. If they float between that unit and other units of the hospital, then you would include them in the reporting. The last one that I wanted to address before we get back to the phone is several different people asked about clinics that are under the same CMS certification number as the hospital. That’s somebody’s question, sorry, CCN. CCN stands for CMS certification number, so the way your facility is identified to CMS. If you have physician clinics, satellite clinics, any clinic if they’re providing outpatient services, then you do not count the staff there and that doesn’t matter if they’re inside your facility or across the street or whatever. So I’ll take those out of the chat queue. Dustin, can we take some more questions from the phone, please?Yes. Our next question is from Clara Matthews. Go ahead, your line is open.Thank you, my question has been answered, but I was concerned about the perioperative units. Are they included in the count or is that they’re not?We are not clinicians so you will have to explain what the perioperative unit is or does.Our staff that check in our patients, that take care of them postoperatively, that provide the surgery, or our in-out patient. It’s the hospital where it’s the outpatient area but they also take care of the inpatient as far as providing the surgery procedures for them.Okay, so to me that is similar to the question that was asked earlier about the hospital with the single OR since they’re providing services to inpatients and outpatients. You can just count them as you would staff that float between other inpatient and outpatient units, so you would want to include those.Our next question is from Kathy? Go ahead, your line is open.My question was answered already, thank you.Our next question is from Doneka Woods. Go ahead, your line is open.I had questions about we are a psychiatric and acute care as in drug and alcohol rehabilitation hospital and I don’t—do we fall under the IRF and the other one, I think it was called ISB or something?So I believe, and you can look at the way—is your facility enrolled in NHSN?Yes, our facility is enrolled in NHSN. Most of our numbers come back as zero due to the fact that we are not an acute care—like we don’t do surgeries, we don’t perform any IV infusion therapy or any of that here.Right, so you might want to send a message to NHSN@ with the specific question so we can verify. Generally, a facility that provides acute inpatient services for drug and alcohol abuse is considered an inpatient psychiatric facility and so that’s no longer required to report, but again, we’d want to check how your facility is considered by CMS so that we don’t steer you wrong, so if you could send us an email so we can check your enrollment and check the CMS certification number with CMS and we can let you know the exact correct answer.Okay, and that is NHSN dot?NHSN@ Okay, thank you, and if we do have to report, I just had questions about our admissions department because they get all of our patients in from admissions and if they would be some of the people that we would classify in our document.Sure and that’s a good question because it is covered by several of the chat questions as well, so if you have people that are doing admissions to the inpatient unit and they’re inside your inpatient acute care facility, then you would count them. All personnel are counted. It doesn’t matter if they’re providing direct patient care or not, so admissions, dietary staff, maintenance staff, anybody like that would be counted.Okay, sorry last question. Also, with the agency people who are coming in who do not get the flu vaccine from us, would they also be counted?For NHSN purposes, agency nurses and other staff are considered contractors, and reporting contractors is optional. So if you do want to report them, you would need to count them in the other contract personnel category, but you do not need to report them.Thank you.Our next question is from Nancy Kellet(?). Go ahead, your line is open.Thank you. My question has been answered.Our next question is from Deborah. Go ahead, your line is open.My inpatient psych facility has ten beds. We have the exact same CNN number. Do I not count that?I’m sorry, can you say that again?I have an inpatient psych unit, it has ten beds. It is the same CNN number as the hospital. It’s in my unit. Those nurses that work there, they don’t flow to other units but they go to meetings within the hospital. Do I count those people?Yes. To clarify, the inpatient psychiatric facility reporting that is no longer required is for CMS-certified inpatient psychiatric facilities. Those facilities would have separate CMS certification numbers from a short stay acute care hospital, so if you have psychiatric inpatient units in your hospital that are under the same CMS certification number, then you would count those staff. It is a little confusing.Okay and what about contract workers that are working within my hospital during construction within my hospital?So that’s the same as the question about the agency personnel. If they’re under a contract or an agency nurse or staff person for whatever work that they’re doing, they are considered other contract personnel and it’s optional to report them, and if you do report them, they need to be reported in that separate other contract personnel category.Okay, that explains it. Thank you.Our next question is from Pam Sunberg. Go ahead, your line is open.My question was regarding an outpatient specialty clinic that we have in our facility. The providers sometimes come to the acute area for consultations, so just clarifying that since there’s the possibility that those providers may be doing consultations in the acute area, then they would need to be included as well. Is that correct?That is correct. I think a good way to think about it is that you’re really tracking the personnel and not the unit. So if you have personnel that would work in a unit that would be part of this inpatient reporting, then you should count them even if they also work in an outpatient unit.Okay, thank you.Our next question is from Kara Cruise. Go ahead, your line is open.I just wanted to know, we have clinic personnel that work in off-site physician clinics and what not across the street but they come over. I heard you say it doesn’t count if they’re coming over for lunch but sometimes they use our meeting rooms to have meetings. So that was more of my question is would I need to count them if they’re coming over to use meeting rooms but not otherwise working in the building?If they are work-related meetings and that meeting room is in your acute care facility, then you would count them. We did just want to add, since there’s a chat question related to this from Rita Brandt, that the information I gave someone else is confusing. So another person asked a question about staff that were meeting but their meeting room was actually in an administrative non-care area of the building that was separate which is why I said those people coming in for meetings, because they walk through the acute care facility but don’t actually meet in it, those people don’t count, but in general we consider a meeting or a training or an employee all-hands or whatever to be a work-related duty. So if that is happening in the acute care facility, then those people would need to be counted, and we do understand that that can be difficult to parse out sometimes.Our next question is from Beverly Spain. Go ahead, your line is open.Thank you. I have two quick questions. One, we have nursing students who come to our facility. We do not monitor or provide flu shots for them. Do we need to count them in our numbers since we have no—they don’t provide us any documentation? And our second question was we do have a psychiatric unit that has the same CCN number but they are in a different building about two miles away. Would those personnel be counted into our numbers? Thank you.So to the first question, students, adult students, trainees and volunteers are one of the required reporting categories, so even if your facility does not provide vaccination to those folks, they do need to be counted. And to the second question, if your inpatient unit is completely physically separate—sorry, if the psychiatric unit is completely separate and those people aren’t coming over to what you would think of as your main building to do some work duties, then you do not need to count it even though it’s an inpatient unit because it’s physically distant, if that makes sense.Yes. That’s what I thought but I wanted to clarify. Thank you very much.Our next question is from Shelek Shaw. Go ahead, your line is open.Hi. So my question is we have two different inpatient facilities and employees sometimes go back and forth between the two facilities. Do I count those employees twice or just once?So if you have two acute care facilities and let’s say a physician works in both facilities, then you would count that physician in the reports for each facility. So yeah, if they’re working in both facilities, we want that to be accounted for.Thank you.Our next question is from Dana Mesa. Go ahead, your line is open.Hello. My question is about if we are in a state that still requires reporting of flu vaccination and outpatient healthcare practitioners, can we then include the outpatient healthcare practitioners in our NHSN reporting or do we need to submit it a different way to our state?So those need to be submitted a different way to the state, which we realize is challenging for states that had previously used NHSN to do state and CMS reporting. If you also, Dana, could send us a message to that NHSN@ address, there’s a group of NHSN folks that are working with states that have come conflicts that have arisen now between state and CMS reporting requirements due to these changes, so we can get you hooked up with them.Great. Thank you.Our next question is from Anna Cobb. Go ahead, your line is open.I have a couple of questions and some clarification. One is related to our physicians. If we have a staff of let’s just say one hundred but only sixty of them have come in to see patients, are we only counting the sixty or do we need to count how many are on staff if they haven’t come into the hospital?That’s a good question. So if you have individuals who work at your facility but who actually don’t come in at least once during the reporting period, so that’s October 1st through March 31st. If they don’t come in during that time period, you would not count them.Okay. And then on the—we have some employees who are also students. Do they get counted twice? Well, so do they get counted as the employee side and then does our educator count them for the student side?Yes. So we realize that sometimes people fit into a couple of different categories, so in this case you would count them just in the employee category and then not count them in the student category.And then one more on the clarification for employees, our off-site employees that come to the facility for meetings. I understand we count those but we have some departments that are off site but they may walk across the street to our gift shop or to grab lunch. Those employees are not counted, correct?Yes, you are correct. You would not count those individuals if they’re just coming in for like you said, lunch or purchasing something at a gift shop.Thank you.Our next question is from Kathy Litenue. Go ahead, your line is open.(No response).Our next question is from Faith Heisher.?. Go ahead, your line is open.My question was answered, thank you.Our next question is from Deborah. Go ahead, your line is open.(No response).Our next question is from William Colors. Go ahead, your line is open.I just had a question about collecting the data. We collected it actually by a healthcare worker across our whole enterprise, not necessarily whether it was the inpatient acute care facility. Can we report those numbers as sort of like over-reporting or do you want us to split those out for only people that come into our acute care facility?Yes, you do need to split them out. This gets to another question that had come through the chat. Some people have noted that this requirement was published rather late in the season and their facilities have already been collecting data in the old way, and unfortunately that is just the way that it worked out due to the rule-making cycle that CMS uses. We have advised them on when the season is but it’s not always able to get this out so I think everybody understands that this is going to be kind of a transitional season and that facilities have set things up to collect data in a certain way and are now having to make changes mid-season. So those changes do need to be made, but it’s understood that this requirement has come out mid-season and that you can’t just turn a ship all at once. So that’s what we can tell you all about that.Okay, we’ll do our best to split them out then. Thank you.We show no further questions at this time.Okay, great. So we have probably 30 or 40 questions in the queue and technically we are supposed to be ending. I will read through these and try to get through a few in the next minutes and if your question was not answered, we’re going to pull the questions out of the queue and provide answers and we will post that with the recordings and the slides on the site that was sent in the invitation, so if we did not get to your question due to lack of time, it will certainly be answered. So one question was will you be updating the acute care facility Frequently Asked Questions on the NHSN web page, and the answer is yes. We’ve prepared new materials and they will be posted in the next couple of weeks so that the information that’s up there reflects the new requirements. Another question, just want to reiterate this overall. There were several questions about registration staff, what about accounting staff, what about other types of staff that don’t provide direct patient care and patient care is not a criterion for this. It’s work in an inpatient unit of the acute care facility. So if those people meet that requirement, then you would count them. We had a question which several people may have about why these changes were made because it seems to have made things much more difficult and we do recognize that, again, this is kind of turning the ship mid-season. If you would like to send us a message to nhsn@ we will try to get you connected with someone at CMS where you can share your feedback about the changes. NHSN has made changes in response to changes in the CMS reporting requirements, so those changes were not initiated here but we’re happy to help you change your reporting as much as possible. So somebody asked if the nursing students are at the hospital for less than five hours one time only, should they be counted? So for NHSN reporting purposes, any part of a working day is considered to be one day, so if that one time happens between October 1st and March 31st, then they should be counted. Just got a question. We have a program that brings high school students in for observation and shadowing and do they need to be counted? Generally, we don’t consider observation or shadowing to be a work duty or volunteerism, so generally we would advise that you would not count those people. In addition, just want to reiterate that that adult students, trainees, and volunteers category is for persons 18 and over so that would probably not count a large portion of any high school students that might come in. There were a couple of questions about can the slides be printed, will the slides be made available, is this recording available? There is a PDF of the slides in the files window which is on probably the lower right hand part of your screen. You can print that. They’ll also be posted at the NHSN website. The recording of this session and the transcript will also be posted to the link that was sent in your email invitation within a couple of weeks. So I think unfortunately we’re going to have to stop now because we’re over time but I do want to reiterate that if you entered a question in the chat box and we did not get to it, we have a record of all those questions, we’ll provide some written responses and make those available to you. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you attending this event, and if you have other help that you need, please do contact us at nhsn@. Thank you.END. ................
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