On November, 23 the NHSN released a new set of CSV templates for the required weekly COVID-19 reporting. These changes came as a surprise and left many providers scrambling. After reviewing the changes the EasyReporting team identified that 26 of the 38 fields had changed. Either the field name had changed or it was a new value being tracked. Here are some of the notable data points the NHSN is now requiring:

  • numrespostest
    Number of residents with a new positive COVID-19 viral test result.
    This number is all inclusive of all testing; not just POC tests. That means providers need to marry outsourced test results and internal POC test results.
  • resc19poctestperf
    Since the last date of data entry in the Module, how many COVID-19 point-of-care tests has the LTCF performed on residents
    As per all data points on this report, these numbers are calculated in the context of just the reporting window. In talking with our customers, it is proving difficult to keep track of all POC test results, let alone determine which go into the current reporting window.
  • numrespostestposag
    Of the number of reported residents above with a Positive Test, how many were tested using positive SARS-CoV-2 antigen test only (no other testing performed)
    If you take the dataset of positive residents within the reporting window, how many were only tested with an antigen test? Pretty tricky to keep track and calculate.
  • numResPosTestPosAgNegNAAT
    Of the number of reported residents above with a Positive Test, how many were tested using positive SARS-CoV-2 antigen test and negative SARS CoV-2 NAAT (PCR)
    Also known as a “false negative”.  This is the most intriguing stat; especially when EasyReporting can provide specific metrics on false negatives for specific POC machine (make and model).
  • numResPosTestReinf
    Of the number of reported residents above with a Positive Test, how many were considered as re-infected?”
  • numresconfflu
    Number of residents with new influenza (flu)
  • numresothresp
    Number of residents with acute respiratory illness symptoms, excluding COVID-19 and/or influenza (flu).
    Again, this seems a little difficult for a provider to calculate this hand. EasyReporting pulls ICD-10 codes from your EHR and separates out residents with business logic.
  • c19nonpoctestresults
    During the past two weeks, on average, how long did it take your LTCF to receive SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) viral test results of staff and/or facility personnel?
    This metric is part of the old data set. I list it because customers have mentioned calculating this value is pretty meticulous, and the end value submitted to the NHSN is often times inaccurate. With EasyReporting this value is simple to calculate, format, and transmit to the NHSN.

Providers are grappling with how to respond to these rolling changes due to the high frequency and lack of any heads up. One customer had built an internal web application to manage the data collection. When the Nov 23rd update rolled in it was very defeating because the application no longer worked. That seems very discouraging. One things for certain, these rolling updates are not going to go away. At EasyReporting we’ve developed a system that allows us to adjust to changes of this nature within a business day or two. Our hope is to alleviate the headache of future changes for our customer, so no matter how many updates the NHSN publishes they can sleep well knowing their data is accurate and in compliance.

Curious to read more on the Nov 23rd update? Check out the NHSN’s COVID-19 module page.