NHSN Meaningful Use Overview

Declaration of Readiness for Public Health Reporting

For 2018, NHSN Antimicrobial Use (AU) and Antimicrobial Resistance (AR) (AUR) reporting have been identified as a new option for public health registry reporting under Meaningful Use Stage 3 (MU3).

See: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/10/16/2015-25595/medicare-and-medicaid-programs-electronic-health-record-incentive-program-stage-3-and-modifications.

See certification criterion (§ 170.315(f)(6)).

Beginning January 1^st, 2017, a facility enrolled in the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) will be able to register their intent to satisfy the AUR-MU3 objective. The NHSN user interface will include an AUR-MU3 registration page and allow the NHSN Facility Administrator to register AUR-MU3 intent. Active engagement for this MU3 objective includes monthly electronic reporting for a full calendar year of R1 Normative Antimicrobial Use Summary, Antimicrobial Resistance Event, and Antimicrobial Resistance Summary data in the format of Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) to NHSN.

• Detailed information for AUR-MU3 guidance, AUR-MU3 Validation Tool, and ONC Certification can be found on the NHSN site:  https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/cdaportal/meaningfuluse.html
• NHSN Toolkits for AU and AR can be found at https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/cdaportal/toolkits.html. Toolkits include xml samples, helpful hints, vocabulary and business rule information, important links, etc.
• For more detailed information on NHSN CDAs, see NHSN CDA Submission Support Portal (CSSP)

In order to qualify as certified technology an EHR or EHR Module must be capable of creating a Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) documents for Antimicrobial Use and Resistance conformant to the HL7 Implementation Guide for CDA ® Release 2—Level 3: Healthcare Associated Infection Reports, Release 1—US Realm—August 2013. See http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?product_id=20. The following CDAs must all be successfully generated.

• Antimicrobial Resistance Option (ARO) Report (Numerator) specific document template in Section 2.1.2.1 (pages 69-72);
• Antimicrobial Resistance Option (ARO) Summary Report (Denominator) specific document template in Section 2.1.1.1 (pages 54-56);
• Antimicrobial Use (AUP) Summary Report (Numerator and Denominator) specific document template in Section 2.1.1.2 (pages 56-58)

Certification will consist of validating the generated CDAs against a Schematron Validator.  A test instance of the validator may be found at https://www.lantanagroup.com/validator/.  Choose the Healthcare Associated Infection (HAI) Reporting (Normative R1; June 2013) to validate against.

To learn more about Meaningful Use Incentives and Certification, see https://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/ehr-incentives-certification

Kindly contact the NHSN customer support desk at nhsncda@cdc.gov for questions and more information. Please copy the meaningfuluse@cdc.gov on all such emails, for tracking and follow up, as needed.