HHS, IDHW and IHA have noted several areas that continue to impact hospital reporting and have created this resource of common issues.

{new 11/3} – In assessing the most recent data submissions, IHA noted that data on hospital capacity, especially as they help communicate the staffing challenges many facilities are experiencing, are critically important. When entering data for hospital bed reporting it is important to report staffed bed availability. Additionally, it is important that facilities are using the most current version of TeleTracking’s template when uploading which includes all data items that are required or may be required in the future.  Data items related to staffed beds include:

• All hospital beds: Total number of all staffed inpatient and outpatient beds in your hospital, including all overflow, observation, and active surge/expansion beds used for inpatients and for outpatients (includes all ICU, ED, and observation).
• All adult hospital beds: Total number of all staffed inpatient and outpatient adult beds in your hospital, including all overflow and active surge/expansion beds for inpatients and for outpatients (includes all ICU, ED, and observation).
• All hospital inpatient beds: Total number of staffed inpatient beds in your hospital including all overflow, observation, and active surge/expansion beds used for inpatients (includes all ICU beds). This is a subset of #2.
• Adult hospital inpatient beds: Total number of staffed inpatient adult beds in your hospital including all overflow and active surge/expansion beds used for inpatients (includes all designated ICU beds). This is also a subset of #2.
• All hospital inpatient bed occupancy: Total number of staffed inpatient beds that are occupied.
• Adult hospital inpatient bed occupancy: Total number of staffed inpatient adult beds that are occupied.
• ICU Beds: Total number of staffed inpatient ICU beds. This is a subset of #2 and #3.
• Adult ICU beds: Total number of staffed inpatient ICU beds. This is a subset of #2 and #3.
• ICU bed occupancy: Total number of staffed inpatient ICU beds that are occupied. This is a subset of #4.
• Adult ICU bed occupancy: Total number of staffed inpatient adult ICU beds that are occupied. This is also a subset of #4.

Other Notes

• Facilities must report on most fields every day. If facilities are unable to report on actual weekend days or other days when the facility is not staffed, back-reporting can only be done in TeleTracking.
• Complete reporting must include data in all applicable fields. Blank fields can count against a facility’s reporting status. If, for instance, when hospitals don’t admit patients in the prior 24 hours, they still need to enter “0” for all age strata to assure complete reporting. Alternately, if a particular data point doesn’t normally apply to the facility, they should also enter “0” in the field.
• Facilities that are part of health systems with centrally managed supplies cannot skip PPE related fields. They should – according to the most recent guidance – report some portion of the centrally managed supplies. This allocation can be determined by the hospital system and HHS has not offered formal guidance on this point.
• Facilities using IRTS to upload the data to HHS must mark “yes” on the Opt-In field on Hospital Capacity to facilitate the data push. These facilities must report daily on: Hospital Prev Day, Hospital Capacity, Hospital Patients, and Hospital PPE & Supplies tabs and meet the frequency reporting requirements noted on each page. The daily push from IRTS to TeleTracking happens at 2:30pm, so updates should be completed before that time to be included.
• Hospitals that use a combination of IRTS and TeleTracking for data reporting should be aware that IRTS data uploads can overwrite data that have already been entered into TeleTracking for a given day this is particularly problematic when data have been entered into Teletracking to back-report missed days of reporting.