Support robust funding for the National Healthcare Safety Network
NHSN is $60 million in annual funding; contact your Senator and tell them to support this budget line item.
The National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) within CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID) must be funded at $60 million in annual appropriations to sustain the critical modernization initiative currently in its final stages.
NHSN is our nation's tracking and response system for healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) on a facility, state, and federal level. It is the most comprehensive and established system to capture and analyze data that informs healthcare facility quality improvement interventions, mitigation strategies, and outbreak responses to HAIs. Currently, NHSN supports 38,000 facilities and an average of 1,500 users at any given time, and an average of 400 help desk tickets daily.
NHSN is nearing the completion of a major modernization effort that now supports automation, FHIR-based data exchange, and digital quality measures, all of which will result in more clinician time at the bedside and more time dedicated to implementation of infection prevention strategies. The newly modernized NHSN requires additional annual funding support and only Congress has the authority to make this happen. Annual budget funding must be raised to $60 million by 2026 or else NHSN's future may be in jeopardy.
Join SHEA in contacting your Senators to urge them to support $60 million per year for NHSN.