Justification for an Expedited Review

JUSTIFICATION FOR A CHANGE REQUEST

The Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP), part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Office of Preparedness and Emergency Operations (OPEO) Division of National Healthcare Preparedness Programs, is seeking an Office of Management of Budget (OMB) clearance for a modification of the HPP reporting data collection form that required changes of and addition of some questions. As part of the Hospital Preparedness Cooperative Agreement Program, the awardees including 50 states, 4 cities and 8 territories, are requested to provide information that is collected as Mid-Year Progress Reports and End-of-Year Reports, due at the end of March and September, respectively, for monitoring and to target areas needing technical assistance.

Although the purpose and legislation of the grants remain the same, the guidance were slightly changed to reflect the progress of healthcare preparedness, therefore, the questions were changed and additional questions were added to reflect the guidance.  These changes to the form are crucial to HPP’s decision making process regarding the continued progression from preparedness among hospitals to healthcare systems to community and regional systems.  The HPP program will continue to use information from the report to adjust methodology of the program and funding levels of the awardees.  After the information and data are analyzed, the results enable HPP to monitor healthcare emergency preparedness and progress towards national preparedness goals.  HPP supports priorities outlined by the National Preparedness Goal, established by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2005, guides entities at all levels of government to develop and maintain capabilities to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from major adverse events.  Additionally, it assists government entities to develop and maintain capabilities to identify, prioritize and protect critical infrastructure.

Repeatedly, the Evaluation Section and HPP are requested of information about the status of prepared of the hospitals nationally, by region and by states.  The requests are from the White House, Congress, Federal government administrators and the awardees.  More recent request pertained to data relevant to pandemic flu (HINI) and recover, and data included were that data the awardees reported on their capability of hospital available beds of Emergencies and Disasters (HAvBED) System, Mass Immunization and Mass Prophylaxis. Additional information requested were countermeasures as doses of antibiotics, antivirals and prophylactic for responder and health care personnel. For preparedness elements, the information on regions within the state that can maintain patients in negative pressure isolation was provided.

The OPEO already contracted $100,000 to Administration for Children and Family to develop the web-based interface reporting system.  It would be a waste of resource if the clearance is not obtained, and timely, for use by the HPP and awardees.

Based on the justification and of the eminent deadlines, we are requesting an expedited review and action of an ICR change request in approval of the information request of the awardees in the End-of-Year FY 2008 report. We are requesting clearance for the reporting template within the next week because need to complete the web-based test among the staff and with the awardees then launch the reporting tool on the Internet before the end of September in order to allow grantee reporting beginning October 1, 2009.

We are in the process of sending OMB a revision ICR to avoid similar requests for expedited change request for the next reporting deadline in March.