What is WA HEALTH?
Washington’s Healthcare, Emergency And Logistics Tracking Hub (WA HEALTH) lets us see which hospitals are struggling and which can take on a heavier burden. We call WA HEALTH a “healthcare capacity/resource surveillance program.” With it, we watch and better understand hospital bed capacity and hospital respiratory data (for diseases like COVID-19, flu, and RSV). Uses for WA HEALTH include:
- Better know how many patients a hospital can take
- Plan for future hospital capacity needs
- Understand hospitals’ ability to respond to an emergency
- Understand what resources hospitals need
- Better knowledge of severe respiratory illness spread
Participating hospitals and healthcare partners can view WA HEALTH data in near-real-time through dedicated WA HEALTH data products. You can gain near-real-time insights and make timely and informed decisions on public health threats. WA HEALTH collects, reports, and analyzes hospital bed capacity data and hospital respiratory data to spot health trends at local and state levels.
Purpose
Situational Awareness and Resource Management: With WA HEALTH, we monitor the stress on the healthcare system and ensure critical resources are available for current and incoming patients.
WA HEALTH can:
- Manage patient surge capacity: We can "balance the load." We quickly identify overwhelmed facilities and those that can receive more patients during disasters or outbreaks.
- Be shared and is scalable: With WA HEALTH hospitals and jurisdictions share data with standardized definitions. This improves local, state, and national response-readiness and resource allocation. We are faster and better prepared with near-real-time bed capacity data.
- Anticipate needs: We can use occupancy trends and modeling for long-term capacity planning. This ensures system resilience.
- Better understand the impact of respiratory illness on hospital capacity: WA HEALTH tracks hospital data on COVID-19, flu, and RSV. This helps us predict how the overlapping spread of these diseases will affect hospital capacity and resource allocation.
Data Collection
WA HEALTH collects near-real-time capacity and resource data from 93 Washington acute care facilities.
- Hospital respiratory data: We collect new admissions and hospitalizations, including ICU beds occupied with confirmed COVID-19, flu, and RSV cases.
- Hospital bed capacity data: We collect statistics on the number of occupied and unoccupied staffed beds by types such as adult inpatient, pediatric inpatient, ICU, PICU, NICU, surge, etc.
Data Reporting Requirements
Reporting is mandatory under the emergency rule (WSR 25-24-043 (PDF)). Acute care hospitals in Washington, licensed under chapter 70.41 RCW, are required to report maintenance and operation data to us. They use WA HEALTH, which forwards hospital bed capacity and hospital respiratory data directly to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) daily to fulfill mandatory federal reporting.
WA HEALTH Outreach
We send monthly newsletters with the latest program news and updates. The team also meets with users regularly. Write us at wahealth@doh.wa.gov to receive our newsletters.
Contact Us
Please email WA HEALTH questions or concerns at wahealth@doh.wa.gov.