NHSNCoLab
Ushering in a new era of NHSN data modernization, innovation, and collaboration for public health surveillance.
About NHSNCoLab
The NHSN Collaborative, or NHSNCoLab, is a collaboration between public and private stakeholders to test, pilot, implement, and validate new National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) healthcare surveillance measures and approaches in alignment with CDC’s Data Modernization Initiative.
The program established a committed network of CDC’s healthcare partners with institutional agreements in place to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of collaboration.
This collaboration will inform new NHSN measures and approaches to healthcare event data collection, assessing the feasibility and validity of new NHSN surveillance concepts that support patient safety, quality reporting, national benchmarking, and public health preparedness and response.
Maximize Data, Minimize Burden: Innovative strategies to strengthen and advance NHSN’s healthcare surveillance capacity by automating data collection, enabling direct data linking between CDC and healthcare partners, and conducting real-world testing
- Enroll in NHSNCoLab
- Facility enrolls in NHSNCoLab by signing the NHSNCoLab Charter Agreement and NHSNCoLab Stipend Acknowledgement.
- Complete Assessment
- Facility completes technical assessment.
- Establish Connectivity in Sandbox
- NHSN establishes connectivity to facility Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources®* (FHIR) R4 API in electronic health record (EHR) Sandbox environment (with non-PHI/PII data).**
- Complete NHSN Agreement
- Facility completes NHSN Agreement to Participate and Consent form.
- Establish Connectivity in Production
- NHSN establishes connectivity to facility FHIR R4 API* in EHR Production environment (with PHI/PII data).
- *HL7, CDA, FHIR and the FHIR [FLAME DESIGN] are the registered trademarks of Health Level Seven International and their use does not constitute endorsement by HL7.
**Some facilities collaborate on exploratory work prior to FHIR implementation.
EHR: Electronic Health Record, PHI: Protected Health Information, PII: Personally Identifiable Information.
Access to optimum healthcare data for national surveillance to improve NHSN-data accuracy, quality, and validity.
Improve speed and efficiency to reduce wait times for data transmission between NHSN and its healthcare partners
Advance new healthcare data exchange approaches (e.g., FHIR®)
- Move towards fully electronic definitions of healthcare-acquired events
- Minimize reporting burden for facilities and providers
Integrate user perspectives into NHSN surveillance to increase input and adoption from healthcare partners
Planned Measures during 2022-2024
- Glycemic Control (Inpatient medication-related hypoglycemia and inpatient hyperglycemia)
- Hospital-onset, antibiotic-treated C. difficile infection (CDI)
- Hospital-onset bacteremia (HOB)
- Hospital-associated venous thromboembolism (HA-VTE)
- Respiratory pathogen surveillance (RPS)
- Adult sepsis events (ASE) and sepsis outcome
- Medication use in hospitalized patients with COVID-19
NHSNCoLab Sites

Site | Site Name | EHR Vendor* | Measures | Site Leads |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Billings Clinic | Oracle/Cerner | Glycemic Control | Randy Thompson, MD Lisa Ranes, RD, LN, CDCES |
2 | Geisinger | Epic | CDI/HOB, RPS | Mark Shelly, MD |
3 | HCA Healthcare | Meditech, Allscripts, Oracle/Cerner | CDI/HOB, Glycemic Control | Kenneth Sands, MD, MPH William Gregg, MD, MS, MPH |
4 | Mass General Brigham | Epic | Sepsis | Sayon Dutta, MD, MPH Chanu Rhee, MD, MPH |
5 | Michigan Medicine | Epic | Glycemic Control, CDI/HOB, HA-VTE |
Michael Lanham, MD |
6 | Nebraska Medicine | Epic | Glycemic Control | Andjela Drincic, MD Ron Carson |
7 | University of California, Davis Medical Center | Epic | Glycemic Control | Greg Maynard, MD, MS, MHM Yauheni Solad, MD, MHS, MBA |
8 | University of North Carolina Hospitals | Epic | CDI/HOB, RPS | Lisa Stancill, MPH |
9 | University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center | Epic | HA-VTE | Aaron Wendelboe, PhD Justin Dvorak, PhD |
10 | University of Rochester Medical Center | Epic | CDI/HOB | Brenda Tesini, MD |
11 | Yale New Haven Health | Epic | Glycemic Control | Nitu Kashyap, MD, FAMIA Hyung Paek, MD, MSEE |
Funding
FAQs
For additional information, please contact NHSN@cdc.gov