CHA News

HHS Updates COVID-19 Reporting Requirements 

For COVID-19 tracker designees

This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.

On Jan. 6, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) updated its COVID-19 hospital reporting requirements (see the HHS FAQs) in response to changes in the pandemic.  

These reporting requirements are a Medicare Conditions of Participation under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services interim final rule (pages 1190-1197). The new requirements add data fields related to pediatric patients and the sotrovimab therapeutic treatment. Acknowledging the challenges hospitals are facing with the volume of data reporting, HHS has also deactivated several fields.  

In CHA’s initial conversations with the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), the department indicated that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 surge and staffing crisis, it is not able to deactivate all the fields being deactivated at the federal level at this time. However, CDPH is working with CHA to identify which fields are appropriate to deactivate at the state level immediately, and which fields may need to be considered later. CHA will work with CDPH to identify every opportunity to reduce data reporting. Expect to receive more details on which fields will be added and removed next week. 

CHA will make changes to its SmartSheet COVID-19 Tracking Tool to incorporate the new and removed fields. Changes will be implemented on Wednesday, Jan. 19. We will provide hospitals and systems currently using the data upload feature with a revised template on Tuesday, Jan. 18. In addition, CHA will work with CDPH to update the data dictionary and our jointly created data reporting guidance document.  

Please send any questions to COVIDTracker@calhospital.org