Hospital Reporting to WA HEALTH During High Occupancy and Increases in COVID-19 Activity

Hospital Reporting to WA HEALTH During High Occupancy and Increases in COVID-19 Activity

Dear WA HEALTH Hospital Partners,

Thank you for all your efforts to help support timely and accurate reporting to WA HEALTH. As hospital occupancy and COVID hospitalizations increase across the state we want to reiterate the importance of reporting to WA HEALTH. The information you share helps to support state and local response efforts to emergent issues and long-term recovery efforts.

Below are some tips to help ensure WA HEALTH can successfully support state response and recovery efforts.

Critical WA HEALTH Reporting Components

• Daily Reporting – Reporting to WA HEALTH is required daily. While this requirement will change in the near future, your support in providing daily information will help our state respond to the current increase in COVID cases and hospital capacity constraints.
• Data Accuracy – Hospitals are indicating very high occupancy across the state. Some of this is noticeable in WA HEALTH, however, some hospital’s data does not match what we are hearing from stakeholders. Please be sure that your hospital occupancy data for ICU, acute care beds and other inpatient areas reflect current capacity and the reality you are facing. If you are unable to treat patients in typical care areas, please indicate capacity and occupancy numbers in, ‘overflow/surge/expansion areas’ on the WA HEALTH Bed Occupancy page.
• Staffing Constraints – WA HEALTH capacity is pegged at a ‘staffed bed’ level. As staffing issues impact hospital capacity, please be sure to update staff bed capacity numbers in WA HEALTH.

 

If you need any support please free to reach out to WA Health Team wahealth@doh.wa.gov.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Ian

Ian Corbridge, MPH, RN

WA HEALTH Program Administrator

Washington State Department of Health

360-790-5633

Ian.corbridge@doh.wa.gov

www.doh.wa.gov