NHSN trainers show how to run and modify hospital respiratory data reports and check CMS completeness

Ally Binder, lead of NHSN’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Unit, opened a CDC/NHSN webinar that trained users on running and modifying Hospital Respiratory Data (HRD) analysis reports and assessing completeness for CMS reporting.

Tamika Oyabade walked attendees through the HRD analysis reports found in the Hospital Respiratory Data folder, saying users can generate two report types for a facility: a daily line listing and a weekly line listing. Tamika demonstrated the modify-report interface where users can change the report title, choose an export format, select a time period, add filters, pick display and sort variables, and use the "page by" option to create one table per facility org ID. She noted, "All of today's data ... has been created in a testing environment and is for training purposes only." (Tamika Oyabade)

Tamika clarified common report-value conventions: a value of 0 means the facility reported zero for that field; a period (.) indicates the facility did not report any data for that field; and 9999 indicates the field is not applicable to the facility (for example, facilities without ICU beds may enter 9999 in ICU bed fields). She recommended adding calculated metric fields and the underlying variables used to compute them (for example, percent of inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients) to help validate outputs.

Emily Witt, a member of NHSN’s protocol and training team, explained how completeness is assessed. She said facilities may submit HRD through either the daily or weekly pathway but "you will choose one or the other. You do not need to submit in both." (Emily Witt) Emily demonstrated that completeness is assessed from the weekly pathway: the weekly line-listing includes a "week CMS status" variable that indicates whether a facility has met CMS's minimum reporting requirements for a given week (values shown as "complete" or "incomplete"). Emily instructed users to run a report filtered to week CMS status = "incomplete" and inspect fields that display a period/dot to see which required elements are missing.

Emily also showed the calendar view at the facility level, where a green record indicator denotes a complete submission. For daily-pathway users, all seven days (Sunday–Saturday) must show a green indicator for that reporting week to be judged complete; weekly-pathway users will see a green indicator for the reporting week when all required elements were submitted. Group users can use a completeness viewer to check status across facilities and will see three possible indicators: complete (green), no records available (no data submitted for the week), or incomplete (partial submissions or mid-week states).

The trainers directed attendees to downloadable handouts and NHSN resources for step‑by‑step instructions and examples.