Special Bulletin: HHS Requesting Data from Hospitals to Help Determine Distribution of Some CARES Act Funds

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced in an email that it soon will make targeted distributions to hospitals and other facilities that have been particularly affected by the increased burden of caring for those with the COVID-19. To inform how these funds are distributed, HHS is asking all hospitals to provide it with certain information. This includes, for each facility with a Medicare Tax Identification Number (TIN), its total number of intensive care unit beds (as of April 10, 2020), its total number of admissions with a COVID-19 diagnosis (from Jan. 1, 2020 to April 10, 2020) and its National Provider Identifier. It is the AHA’s understanding that these figures will be used to distribute funds to “hot spot” areas. Hospitals must submit these data in order to receive such payments, although doing so is not a guarantee of eligibility for any amount. We encourage all hospitals to do so.

HHS is requiring this information be provided through an authentication portal established by its vendor TeleTracking. Hospitals will be able to submit data in several ways: at an individual hospital level, multiple hospitals at one time, or a batch upload of data for multiple hospitals via a designated individual or third party entity. HHS notes that hospital “site administrators” received an email from HHS on Sunday, April 12, or thereafter, with instructions and a link to register on this portal. If it is not clear who received this notification, or if there are questions about the registration process, HHS says hospitals should contact TeleTracking Technical Support at 877-570-6903.

Submissions must be made by 11:59 PST on Thursday, April 23. In addition, the agency believes that the data entry process should not require more than 10 minutes.

Further Questions

If you have questions, please contact AHA at 800-424-4301.