To All NHSN CoLab Partners:
In an effort to systematically identify and address health disparities, the Surveillance Branch is prioritizing the standardization of race, ethnicity, language, need for and use of interpreter (REaLI) data collection and documentation. This will align with upcoming required changes to FHIR in 2025.
As a first step to achieving this goal, we would like to better understand CoLabs’ current practices of collecting this data. We ask that your Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO), internal Electronic Health Record (EHR) director (or equivalent), and any needed additional staff work together to complete the attached survey.
The survey will take approximately 1 hour to complete and asks for the provision of your hospital system’s current selectable options for race, ethnicity, language, interpreter need and interpreter use (uploaded files with individual options or photos is preferred, if possible) and a description of any standard work and standard scripting that is already in place. Please complete this survey in REDCap at this link within the next 30 days.
When the surveys are completed, we would like to publish this information (without identifying hospital systems or EHR vendors) so that we are able to provide a better understanding of baseline variation in current practice across health systems.
If any CoLab hospital system members are interested in becoming a contributing coauthor for this manuscript, please email us stating your interest.
As a second step, once we have a baseline understanding of current states of REaLI data and data collection, we are inviting CoLab CMIOs and EHR leads to consider partnering with us to standardize the data and its collection across CoLab sites to increase overall quality and to facilitate better data comparison.
Signing on to participate in this second step will include participating in monthly strategic meetings to adopt: HL7 combined race and ethnicity data standards, an NHSN minimum standard language data dictionary, and interpreter need and use data collection and documentation standards.
The Surveillance Branch also plans to publish findings from this collaborative work and invites members as coauthors. If you are interested in learning more about this second step of REaLI optimization, please email us stating your interest.
We thank you all for the work that you do. Please reach out to us with any question you may have.
Janine Young, MD
Medical Advisor
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease (NCEZID)
Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion/Surveillance Branch (DHQP/SB)
Yenling Ho, PhD
Epidemiologist
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease (NCEZID)
Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion/Surveillance Branch (DHQP/SB)
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Young, Janine |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2025-05-19 |