The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) hosted a webinar on January 4 to review the latest changes to National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) reporting. Nursing homes will no longer report on primary series for COVID-19 vaccination for health care personnel. Primary series reporting on residents ended in 2023 but health care personnel reporting continued due to data collection requirements for the Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Quality Reporting Program (QRP). SNF QRP reporting requirements were updated with the finalization of the FY 2024 SNF Prospective Payment System (PPS) rule and NHSN has now been updated accordingly.
Beginning with the first reporting week for 2024 Quarter 1, January 1–7, nursing homes will report only the number of health care personnel who are up to date with COVID-19 vaccination. An individual is considered up to date if they have received the 2023/2024 COVID-19 vaccine that became available in September 2023. Individuals who have not received the 2023/2024 vaccine are considered not up to date and are classified in one of three ways: medical contraindications, offered but declined, or unknown/other. If the vaccine is not yet available in your area, status would be reported “unknown” because the healthcare personnel have not yet had the opportunity to decline or accept vaccination.
Other changes to the NHSN application include retirement of quality assurance alerts and a new portal for accessing the NHSN Help Desk. NHSN users should now utilize the NHSN-ServiceNow portal for any assistance, available here. NHSN-ServiceNow should be used in place of nhsn@cdc.gov for questions or assistance.
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