Introductory Letter to Hospitals

Attachment C: Introductory Letter to Hospitals

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

National Center for Health Statistics

3311 Toledo Road

Hyattsville, Maryland 20782

To Whom It May Concern

I am writing to request your participation in the National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Currently, NHCS is an electronic data collection effort, gathering critical data across inpatient, emergency, and outpatient department settings in order to create estimates of hospital utilization in the United States. Data, including patient identifiers, are collected via your electronic health records or from Uniform Bill (UB) administrative claims. Patient identifiers are being collected to enable linkage to birth and death records, and data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Participation in NHCS is completely voluntary and for research purposes only. You or your staff may discontinue participation at any time without penalty or loss of benefits. Your participation allows us to more accurately describe hospitals like yours in our national statistics and helps us to continue to serve as a resource to the hospital community, health care researchers, and policy makers. Compensation for participation will be provided.

No information collected in this study will be published in any manner that will allow identification of individual hospitals or patients. Be assured that there are several ways that the Privacy Rule (45 CFR Part 160 and Part 164, subparts A and E) (as mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA]) (PL 104-191) allows you to participate. In particular, disclosures of patient data are permitted for public health purposes and for research that has been approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), both of which apply to this study. The IRB at CDC’s NCHS has reviewed and approved all aspects of this study.

Please be assured that we are required by law to keep all data regarding patients and facilities strictly confidential and to use these data only for research and statistical purposes as stated by Section 308(d) of the Public Health Service Act 42 United States Code 242m(d) and Section 512 of the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (PL-107-347). You may have questions about your rights as a participant in this research study. If so, please call the Institutional Review Board at the National Center for Health Statistics, toll-free at 1-800-223-8118. Please leave a brief message with your name and phone number. Say that you are calling about Protocol #2015-13.

NCHS has contracted with Westat, a longstanding research organization, to assist in this task. A representative from Westat will contact you to arrange for an appointment to discuss the possibility of your hospital’s participation in the NHCS. If you have questions, please feel free to contact Ms. Kathy Chimes, Westat Project Director for NHCS, (phone: (301) 251-4302; e-mail: chimesk1@westat.com) or Carol DeFrances, Chief, Ambulatory and Hospital Care Statistics Branch at NCHS (phone: (301) 458-4440; e-mail: cdefrances@cdc.gov).

Sincerely,

Charles Rothwell

Director, National Center for Health Statistics