Laura Blum presented Lessons Learned from Validation of Electronically-Submitted National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Antimicrobial Use (AU) Option Data at 2019 Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) Annual Conference in Raleigh, NC.

Hospital participation in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Antimicrobial Use (AU) surveillance increased exponentially over the last two years, with over 1,100 facilities submitting AU data to NHSN as of December 2018. The NHSN AU Team works closely with hospital participants to identify and mitigate data errors. These data validation activities prompt corrections to erroneous data and serve as guidance for the NHSN AU Team as it develops its technical support. The NHSN AU Team analyzed AU data submitted to NHSN between January 1, 2016 and March 31, 2018 to identify and categorize data errors and pinpoint opportunities for targeted outreach and improvement. This presentation summarizes the most common data quality issues in antimicrobial days (i.e., numerator data) and days present (i.e., denominator data), and suggests additional steps to ensure data validity during the AU data submission process.