Special Bulletin: UPDATE: HHS Requests Data from Hospitals to Help It Allocate Funding to COVID-19 High-impact Areas

On April 21, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced 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 COVID-19. To inform how these funds are distributed, HHS has asked 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. HHS has indicated that that these data will be used to distribute funds to "hospitals in areas that have been particularly impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak." Hospitals must submit these data in order to receive such payments, although doing so is not a guarantee of eligibility for any amount.

HHS has required that the information be provided through an authentication portal established by its vendor TeleTracking. 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 the TeleTracking 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.

As of 9 a.m. ET today, April 23, HHS has indicated that 1,700 hospitals have completed data entry and that another 3,500 have registered on the portal. HHS has acknowledged long wait times for those calling for technical support, and indicated that TeleTracking recently added 100 staff to respond to call center requests. They also are directing hospitals to leave a message if they are unable to reach someone live, and that a member of the support staff team will call each hospital back. The agency believes that the data entry process should not require more than 5 or 10 minutes.

The submission deadline is tonight, Thursday, April 23, at 11:59 p.m. PST. We encourage all hospitals to submit the required data to HHS.

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