REMINDER ABOUT ANNUAL HEALTH CARE WORKER FLU VACCINE DATA

TO: All Licensed Healthcare Facilities in Colorado

FROM: Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE)

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 2018 - 2019 data. 

HF Portal: 
- Timeframe to count employees for denominator: October 1, 2018- December 31, 2018.
- Minimum number of days employees must work to be counted in denominator: 1 day.
- Deadline to submit data through portal: March 31, 2019.
- 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, 2018 - March 31, 2019.
- Minimum number of days employees must work to be counted in denominator: 1 day.
- Deadline to submit data through portal: May 15, 2019.
- If you have trouble accessing NHSN or reporting your data, please call 303-692-2923 or send an email to NHSN@cdc.gov and in the subject line include "2018 - 2019 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. 

For other questions regarding the rule, please call Erica Bloom at 303-692-2789. 

2018 Reporting FAQ

2018 Reporting Tips