Hospitals with a cybersecurity event or natural disaster that impacts data availability during one or more Survey reporting periods will need to contact the Help Desk and provide their hospital name, CMS Certification Number, description of the event including dates and duration, supporting evidence, and date in which they will be able to resume reporting. If approved by Leapfrog, hospitals will report on the impacted measures using the data available and exclude data from the month(s) impacted by the cybersecurity event or natural disaster. Results will still be calculated if minimum reporting requirements are met and will be displayed on the Survey Results website with the following footnote: "Results are based on limited data due to a reported cybersecurity event or natural disaster." This revised policy closely aligns with the Extraordinary Circumstances Exception policy from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) but will only be applied to cybersecurity events and natural disasters.
For the purposes of the Safety Grade, a letter grade will still be calculated based on the data available, but any underlying measures impacted by the event will have results reported along with the following footnote: "Results are based on limited data due to a reported cybersecurity event or natural disaster."