The National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) system through which nursing homes report COVID, flu, and other data is now requiring all users to obtain Level 3 SAMS security access to continue reporting.

NHSN has reached out to Level 1-listed users over the past several months in attempts to assist these users in obtaining Level 3 access and sent a blast email to remaining Level 1 users on March 6. Level 1 users will now receive the following message when attempting to report data through NHSN: 503 Access Temporarily Unavailable.

To complete the upgrade to Level 3 access and resume reporting capabilities, users should email nhsn@cdc.gov with the subject line “Enhancing Security Data – Level 3.” NHSN users requesting to upgrade will receive an email from SAMS (SAMS-no-reply@cdc.gov) with next steps for completing security verification. Please be sure your email address is current in NHSN when requesting this assistance. Check or edit your email address following these instructions.