On Wednesday, August 12, the 2020-Q3 Top-Line for skilled nursing centers was released. For the first time, it allows facilities to compare their staff and resident COVID-19 case data to other nursing centers in their county and state.
Center COVID-19 Data Alongside County and State Totals and Averages
The Top-Line has four tables summarizing resident and staff COVID-19 cases and deaths. Each table shows weekly incidence, as well as totals for all the available NHSN reporting periods. The image below is an example of a table on resident confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Nursing Center Cases Often Rise and Fall with the Community
Independent analyses from
Kaiser Family Foundation and
The Wall Street Journal, as well as
our own, show that hotspot states with rising cases in the community often see cases rise among nursing centers. And the reverse is also often seen. Declining cases in the community are seen alongside declines in nursing centers.
In this edition of the Top-Line, the 7-day average of new cases in a state per 100,000 people (blue line) is trended alongside 7-day totals of new cases in nursing centers per 1,000 residents (red line). The image below is an example graph for the state of New Jersey.
COVID-19 NHSN and Other Resources
The Top-Line includes information on CMS’s and NHSN’s quality assurance (QA) process for publishing COVID-19 data. Check out NHSN’s
recorded webinar or
FAQs on common data entry issues.
Access Your Center’s Top-Line Today Through LTC Trend Tracker
Once you are a registered user of LTC Trend Tracker, you will receive an email whenever a new publication is released. If you missed the email on March 9 or it got caught in a spam filter, you can always
access current and historic Top-Lines within LTC Trend Tracker.
This NHSN COVID-19 edition of Your Top-Line can be found in the third quarter of 2020 edition (2020-Q3).