Att K Induction Letter for NHDS 110410

Attachment K Induction Letter for NHDS

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

National Center for Health Statistics

3311 Toledo Road

Hyattsville, Maryland 20782

Dear

We would like to request your participation in the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), a component of the National Hospital Care Survey, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since 1965, NHDS, authorized by Section 306 of the Public Service Act, has been a primary source of information on the nation’s inpatient use in short-stay, non-federal hospitals. From 2011, NHDS will become an electronic data collection, gathering Uniform Bill (UB) 04 claims data. We plan to collect patient identifiers for discharges so that we can link to birth and death records and potentially link to data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Participation in NHDS is completely voluntary. You or your staff may refuse to answer any question or may stop participating at any time without penalty or loss of benefits. Your participation allows us to better accurately describe hospitals like yours in our national statistics and help us to continue to serve as a resource to the hospital community, health care researchers, and policy makers. Participating hospitals in the NHDS will receive a one time $500 set-up fee and an additional $500 for each year of data collection.

No information collected in this study will be published in any manner that will allow identification of individual hospitals or patients. Be assured that there are several ways that the Privacy Rule (as mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA]) allows you to participate. In particular, disclosures of patient data are permitted for public health purposes and for research that has been approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), both of which apply to this study. The IRB at CDC’s NCHS has reviewed and approved all aspects of this study. Included in the enclosures is the “Frequently Asked Questions”. Please note, in particular, the detailed section on confidentiality and use of data.

Please be assured that we are required by law to keep all data regarding patients and facilities strictly confidential and to use these data only for research and statistical purposes as stated by Section 308(d) of the Public Health Service Act [42 United States Code 242m (d) and Section 513 of the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (PL-107-347].

The NCHS has contracted with Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International, a non-profit research organization, to assist in this task. The hospital recruitment for the survey will be conducted by Social and Scientific Systems (SSS), a sub-contractor of RTI. A representative from SSS will telephone you to arrange for an appointment to discuss the possibility of your hospital’s participation in the NHDS. If you have questions, please feel free to call Ms. Deborah Bittner, the SSS Project Director, at (301) 628-0322 or Dr. Carol DeFrances, Team Leader of the Hospital Care Team at NCHS, at (301) 458-4440.

Sincerely,

Edward J. Sondik, Ph.D.

Director, National Center for Health Statistics

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Enclosures