What’s happening: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued guidance to hospitals and state surveyors that underscores the importance of following reporting requirements for new hospital respiratory illness data reporting conditions of participation (CoP).
What else to know: CMS also clarifies in the guidance that psychiatric hospitals and rehabilitation hospitals will report their daily COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus data annually rather than weekly.
As previously reported, all Medicare and Medicaid participating hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) will electronically submit certain respiratory illness data (listed above) to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a weekly basis through the National Healthcare Safety Network, effective Nov. 1. Psychiatric and rehabilitation hospitals and distinct-part units will report data once annually beginning in January 2025.
CMS will determine compliance with these reporting requirements independently from health and safety surveys for all other CoPs performed by state survey agencies or accreditation organizations. CMS will assess compliance with the new CoP over 28-day periods covering four reporting weeks.
Hospitals and CAHs that fail to submit complete and timely data will receive an incomplete reporting notification letter from CMS. Continued non-compliance will be followed with additional notification letters and may lead to enforcement action against the hospital or CAH.
