31 Dec 09 13:18 | RogerMiller said...:
Reporting requirements vary from state to state, and has changed during the course of this pandemic. In the spring, we were reporting all suspected and confirmed cases. In the summer, that CDC guidance changed, and we are now only reporting pediatric hospitalizations and adult deaths.

31 Dec 09 17:15 | LauraCompton said...:
In my experience, the diagnosing agency is responsible for the reporting. For example, if my facility (residential) gets a patient who tested positive for MRSA in the nares in the ER, we don't need to report it.

Likewise, my county health department advised me to only report confirmed influenza, not to include ILIs. Since H1N1 was pretty mild in our area, people were seldom tested, and my facility has zero official cases.

04 Jan 10 21:53 | RebeccaJohnson said...:
H1N1 and other reporting to Public Health.
I am writing from Health Region 9/10 in Texas. We have had multiple requests with multiple changes from both the Department of State Health Services and from local (county) health dept for flu reporting during 2009.In Texas, the diagnosing and testing entity are responsible for reporting. We have a policy that appoints the IPP as the Infection Control Public Reporting Officer. Therefore it is my responsibility to provide demographic info and available clinical info on all "Notifiable Conditions" identified through our lab or by clinical presentation among patients. One of the confusing situations can be when we recieve apatient from another facility and I am not sure if they have reported the condition, even after speaking with IP at the transferring facility. This is rare and I err on the side of conservatism and report to our local health department.

I must say that in the early days of H1N1 Mass Confusion, some days there were multiple directives on reporting. Texas regulation allows any reporting entity to report only once to the local health authority if the county has one. Many counties in our referral area do not have a health facility of any sort. I have settled for reporting to three individuals every Monday, two at state and one at county. I report pos Flu A, Flu B, H1N1 suspects, and confirmed H1N1. Pediatric Mortality in the presence of dx of flu is also reportable but we are blessed to have zero of those so far.

We also were recieving at one time, on a weekly basis, a copy of the internal reporting forms for the health region.

It helps to just take a deep breath and realize that this is new experience for all involved.

08 Jan 10 18:38 | AnnTriplett said...:
Relationship and working with local Health Department excellent, but state reporting (weekly) forms found very difficult to execute and conflicting in information by on site and administrative Nursing and Pharmacy staff. Would revisit format in future.