What are your questions about the ending of the PHE?

I will let Jennifer Stewart respond to the question about receiving the note (I know she got it yesterday from CSTE - but the note indicated it also went to ELR points of contact and I was surprised not to be on that list?).

One question we would love to see addressed is how this impacts reporting from skilled nursing facilities.  Some of our facilities report through NHSN - but a large number report directly to us in  NC  I think there is a CMS requirement for skilled nursing facilites to continue with full (line level) reporting of positives through the end of the year.  But it would be great to have clarity on that point.  I'm not sure how the nursing home data reported to us gets routed once it is sent on.

As a side note - I think the talking points document is very helpful.

Thank you for the summary document Annie.  I had not seen it, but others at Nebraska DHHS probably have; though I will share just in case not.  

I think Steve's point above is a good one -- if we could get a consolidated list then we can evaluate how State regulations impact.  

 Do we  know what conclusions are being drawn about hospitalization data?  The document says that CDC is working with CMS and ASPR on which data elements remain critical.  Hospitalization data has been an ongoing need for us and I fear with reduced cadence and requirements that it will become less reliable and helpful.   

I will let you know if others have questions as I share the summary document.  

Thank you for advocating for us all!
Angela Herbert
DMI Business Lead & Interim DMI Director
Nebraska DHHS 

Hi, I got the email from CSTE. THANK YOU! It was not shared internally with me (which I have pointed out as I think that was an oversight).
to answer question 2: I don't attend the regional meetings or get notes. I would like to. It has been a struggle to remind folks to include the Informatics staff who are managing the reporting systems and who also have experience in epi and/or IT. We get left out and that is a mistake. It always works better when we are at the table as early as possible so any planning for updates, case report design, lab data capture, etc. can be reviewed by the people who know the data systems and how the data collection and reporting work (and who are doing the work to make all of that happen). :-)

Here are the questions I sent (paraphrased) and the initial responses from my supervisor. Do not take these answers as final - some items are still being discussed. Items in brackets or as Note are my addendums.

Q1: When can we stop requiring negative SARS-CoV-2 lab results to be processed/sent. Ans. We are updating the reportable diseases list to remove negative labs; exact date TBD.

note: CT is planning to keep SARS-CoV-2 lab results reportable; in 2023 cases are reportable by providers, but we may go to provider reporting of just COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths like we do for influenza.

Q2: Can we drop the requirement for providers to report results and just have them focus on case reports. Those reports can include the tests they've done onsite - we have a new web portal nearing completion for that. Similar question for colleges, mobile clinics, etc. If we are going to a flu reporting model, is there a plan to build a CLI network of providers? Ans. I’m not sure we can do this yet [drop provider onsite test reporting]; it is a requirement of them being a “lab”  [HHS] so I don’t think I want to do that quite yet. However, they will only need to report positive results.
Note: My take is when HHS requirements drop then we should drop provider reporting of test results or modify for just urgent care/ED plus lab - again TBD

Q3: I would like to stop sending data to CELR as soon as feasible. At this point we are primarily sending negative results. CDC can still get our positive result numbers from our open data portal. (and I just thought of this - the COVID and GenV2 HL7 messages). Ans. I think we need more information from CDC on this one. We won’t have negatives to send to them; the ODP data [CT's open data portal where we publish our COVID-19 data including test results] will go away June 1 and it sounds like they might be modifying the CCLs so they really won’t be able to scrape much longer after the end of the PHE.
Note: We will publish COVID-19 results on a weekly basis like we do influenza results. Note #2: I would like to see a discussion on how CELR worked because I think there was a wide variation on getting it to work and how it worked, as well as some limitations on the CELR side for data deduplication, how to update with 'catch up' data, etc. That may be helpful for future planning purposes.

I had some questions about the utility of having nursing homes report positive test results given they must report outbreaks. That is being discussed. 

I hope you don't regret asking Annie, but thanks for being sure the communities are in the loop!
Nancy L Barrett, ID Informatics HIS Program Lead, CT DPH

I did not receive these talking points through  any other means (I confirmed that after wading through all of my emails from my vacation days.  I did find them very helpful.  I am not sure what regional meetings you are talking about exactly Annie, but I'm going to lean toward no.  Wonder if I can get invited as they seem to talk interesting things that I only find out about later.