NHSNCoLab

Ushering in a new era of NHSN data modernization, innovation, and collaboration for public health surveillance.

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About NHSNCoLab

The NHSN Collaborative, or NHSNCoLab, is a collaboration between public and private stakeholders to pilot, implement, and validate new National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) healthcare surveillance measures and approaches in alignment with CDC’s Data Modernization Initiative.

The program established a committed network of CDC’s healthcare partners, with institutional commitments, data-use agreements, and technical infrastructure already in place to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of collaboration.

This collaboration will inform new NHSN measures and approaches to healthcare event data collection, including  the feasibility and validity of new NHSN surveillance concepts that support patient safety, quality reporting, national benchmarking, and public health preparedness and response.

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Maximize Data, Minimize Burden: Innovative strategies to strengthen and advance NHSN’s healthcare surveillance capacity by automating data collection, enabling direct data linking between CDC and healthcare partners, and conducting real-world testing

Promote Healthcare Quality
Improve Public Health Surveillance
Support NHSN Partners
How It Works
  • Enroll in NHSNCoLab
    • Facility enrolls in NHSNCoLab by signing the NHSNCoLab Charter Agreement and NHSNCoLab Stipend Acknowledgement.
  • Complete Assessment
    • Facility completes technical assessment.
  • Establish Connectivity in Sandbox
  • Complete NHSN Agreement
    • Facility completes NHSN Agreement to Participate and Consent form.
  • Establish Connectivity in Production
    • NHSN establishes connectivity to facility FHIR R4 API* in EHR Production environment (with PHI/PII data).
  • *HL7, CDA, FHIR and the FHIR [FLAME DESIGN] are the registered trademarks of Health Level Seven International and their use does not constitute endorsement by HL7.
    **Some facilities collaborate on exploratory work prior to FHIR implementation.
    EHR: Electronic Health Record, PHI: Protected Health Information, PII: Personally Identifiable Information.
Benefits of Collaboration

Access to optimum healthcare data for national surveillance to improve NHSN-data accuracy, quality, and validity.

Improve speed and efficiency to reduce wait times for data transmission between NHSN and its healthcare partners

Advance new healthcare data exchange approaches (e.g., FHIR®)

  • Move towards fully electronic definitions of healthcare-acquired events
  • Minimize reporting burden for facilities and providers

Integrate user perspectives into NHSN surveillance to increase input and adoption from healthcare partners

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NHSNCoLab Supported Measures

Planned Measures for Piloting

  • Adult sepsis events (ASE) and sepsis outcome
  • Antimicrobial use
  • Glycemic control (inpatient medication-related hypoglycemia and inpatient hyperglycemia)
  • Healthcare-associated venous thromboembolism (HA-VTE) and VTE prophylaxis
  • Healthcare facility-onset, antibiotic-treated C. difficile infection (CDI)
  • Hospital-onset acute kidney injury (AKI)
  • Hospital-onset bacteremia and fungemia (HOB)
  • Neonatal late onset sepsis / meningitis (LOS/MEN)
  • Opioid-associated adverse events (ORAE)
  • Respiratory pathogen surveillance (RPS)
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Abbreviations: AKI = Hospital-onset acute kidney injury, AU = Antimicrobial use, HA-VTE = Healthcare-associated venous thromboembolism, HT-CDI/HOB = Healthcare facility -onset, antibiotic-treated Clostridioides difficile infection / Hospital-onset bacteremia and fungemia, LOS/MEN = Neonatal late onset late onset sepsis / meningitis, RPS = Respiratory pathogen surveillance *Listing of EHR vendors does not imply endorsement by the vendors.
Site Site Name EHR Vendor* Measure(s) Site Leads
1 A.G. Rhodes PointClickCare Long-term care AU Mabela Libosada, MBA, BSN, RN; Ariane Moreau
2 BayCare Oracle/Cerner AKI, Glycemic Control, HA-VTE, HT-CDI/HOB Paul Lewis, MD, FAAFP; Randy McGlothin
3 Billings Clinic Oracle/Cerner Glycemic Control Randy Thompson, MD;
Lisa Ranes, RD, LN, CDCES
4 Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Epic RPS Jonathan Beus, MD
5 Geisinger Epic HT-CDI/HOB, RPS Mark Shelly, MD
6 HCA Healthcare Veradigm, Meditech, Oracle/Cerner, Epic via dbMotion Glycemic Control, HT-CDI/HOB Kenneth Sands, MD, MPH;
William Gregg, MD, MS, MPH
7 Henry Ford Health AKI, HA-VTE, HT-CDI/HOB Scott Kaatz, DO
8 Lorien Health Services PointClickCare Long-term care AU Wayne Brannock; Lena Sturgeon
9 Mass General Brigham Epic HT-CDI/HOB, Sepsis Sayon Dutta, MD, MPH;
Chanu Rhee, MD, MPH
10 Michigan Medicine Epic Glycemic Control, HT-CDI/HOB, HA-VTE Michael Lanham, MD
11 Nebraska Medicine Epic Glycemic Control Andjela Drincic, MD;
Ron Carson
12 Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital Meditech Glycemic Control, HT-CDI/HOB, RPS ShawnTester;Shawn Burroughs, MBA
13 Orlando Health Epic HT-CDI/HOB, LOS/MEN Eric Rose, PharmD
14 Univ. of California, Davis Medical Center Epic Glycemic Control, HT-CDI/HOB, HA-VTE Greg Maynard, MD
15 Univ. of North Carolina Hospitals Epic HT-CDI/HOB, RPS Lisa Stancill, MPH
16 Univ. of Rochester Medical Center Epic HT-CDI/HOB, RPS Brenda Tesini, MD
17 Univ. of Southern California (USC) Health System Oracle/Cerner RPS, CDI/HOB Kymberly Lengyel BSN,CIC, PHN
18 Yale New Haven Health Epic Glycemic Control Hyung Paek, MD, MSEE
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NHSNCoLab Partner Funding

  • Provided directly to the institution
  • Funds information systems support
  • Calibrated to level of institution engagement and number of measures tested (ranging from approximately $50,000 to $150,000)

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FAQs

NHSN uses NHSNLink, an open-source HL7® FHIR® application hosted behind the CDC firewall to connect securely to a healthcare facility’s EHR system via the  FHIR API. NHSNLink extracts and evaluates data using HL7 quality measure standards, generates patient-level reports, and submits the data  to NHSN’s back-end analytic environment for measure calculations that are provided back to the facility.

Additional information about NHSNLink can be found on the About NHSNLink page and The National Healthcare Safety Network’s (NHSN) digital quality measures publication.

Currently, most of the NHSNCoLab partners are piloting data transmission to NHSN’s FHIR endpoint (NHSNLink) via FHIR R4 API. However, NHSN also has selected use cases involving other methods of data transmission and/or aspects of NHSN measure development and implementation (e.g., early exploration of data elements to support natural language processing identification of healthcare-associated VTE ).

The NHSNCoLab is at full capacity for participation. Selected NHSN dQM modules slated to be released in the near future include: Glycemic Control, Medication-related Hypoglycemia, Healthcare-associated, antibiotic-treated C. difficile Infection, and Hospital-onset Bacteremia and Fungemia. These modules will be open to all U.S. hospitals who meet requirements for reporting FHIR dQMs to NHSN (“early adopters”). For additional information about requirements for participation in NHSN dQM modules, please visit the NHSN FHIR portal.

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For additional information, please contact NHSN@cdc.gov