In
February 2012, the Colorado Board of Health (BOH) passed rule 6 CCR 1011-1 Chapter
2 regarding influenza vaccination of employees in licensed healthcare
facilities. Healthcare facilities are
required to report data each spring. For the 2017-2018 influenza season, at
least 90% of your employees should be immunized with the influenza vaccine.
To
report these data, you can use either the Colorado Health Facility Portal (HF
Portal) or the National Health Safety Network (NHSN). Data should be submitted
through only one of these electronic
systems. Reporting to either system will meet the reporting requirement.
Reminder: If a facility has its own license and location, it
must report separately, even if affiliated with a single hospital (i.e.,
Children's Hospital, University Hospital) or home health, assisted living, or
nursing home corporation that has multiple sites. When a hospital or other
facility type has multiple locations, those locations are licensed individually
and therefore, should report separately. Home health agencies may have separate
licenses based on different functions but are in the same location with the
same staff so these facilities would report only once.
Reporting
parameters are listed below for each system to report your 2017-2018 data.
HF Portal:
· Timeframe to count
employees for denominator: October 1, 2017 – December 31, 2017.
· Minimum number of days
employees must work to be counted in denominator: 1 day (New Reporting Criteria - This is a change from the previous
policy that required counting personnel who had worked at a facility for 30
days or more. The change was made to align with federal criteria that apply to
facilities who report through the NHSN).
· Deadline to submit data
through portal: March 31, 2018.
· If you have trouble accessing the portal or reporting your data,
please call Licensure Customer Assistance at 303-692-2836.
NHSN:
· Timeframe to count
employees for denominator: October 1, 2017 – March 31, 2018.
· Minimum number of days
employees must work to be counted in denominator: 1 day.
· Deadline to submit data
through portal: May 15, 2018.
· If you have trouble accessing NHSN or reporting your data,
please call 303-692-2930 or send an email to NHSN@cdc.gov and in the
subject line include “2017 – 2018 HCW Flu Reporting.”
Important: Acute care hospitals, cancer
hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, outpatient dialysis facilities, and
inpatient psychiatric facilities already
using NHSN to report state reportable infections or HCW influenza vaccination
data for Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement should only report their data once through NHSN. HCW influenza
vaccination data reported into NHSN, as required by the Centers for Medicaid
and Medicare Services, also fulfills state influenza vaccination reporting
requirements.
Note: If you
report HCW influenza vaccination data through NHSN, please ensure that you have
joined the Colorado Influenza Reporting Group and conferred rights; otherwise
your data cannot be seen/accessed by the CDPHE. This can be down as follows:
1. In NHSN, use the left hand blue navigation bar, click Group and Join
2. Enter 27648 for both
the group id and joining password
3. Click Join Group
4. At the Confer Rights
page, scroll to the bottom of page and hit accept.
Additional
resources can be found by visiting: https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/board-health-rule-influenza-immunization
