Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will continue to have access to COVID-19 patient information, according to agency officials—despite the Trump administration ordering hospitals to bypass the public health agency and start sending data directly to HHS.
"We have not changed the data ecosystem," CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said on a call with reporters Wednesday. "We merely streamlined data collection mechanisms for hospitals on the front-lines."
The White House Coronavirus Task Force uses data collected from hospitals to inform decisions including where to allocate COVID-19 supplies and treatments, according to HHS.
News broke Tuesday that HHS, rather than the CDC, would begin collecting daily data reports from hospitals, including the number of hospitalized patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19, available beds and ventilators, and COVID-19 patient deaths, among other information, raising concerns that public health researchers and agencies could lose access to the data.
Redfield on Wednesday said the CDC, as well as state and local health departments, will continue to have access to raw data through a centralized database called HHS Protect.
"No one is taking access or data away from CDC," he said. "This access is the same today as it was yesterday."
About 1,000 CDC experts currently have access data in HHS Protect, he added.
Jose Arrieta, chief information officer at HHS, said the department is "exploring" the best way to make data from HHS Protect available to the public, in addition to public health entities.
Arrieta said a primary goal of the policy change was to reduce the reporting burden for hospitals, without requiring them to implement new technology. In its guidance, HHS noted separate governmental agencies had been requesting similar data, leading hospitals to have to submit multiple reports with the same data to different organizations.
"We're actually meeting hospitals technologically where they are from a reporting perspective," Arrieta said.
Hospitals as of Wednesday will submit daily data reports to HHS Protect, which was created in April to consolidate COVID-19 data from hospitals, states and other public and private sources. Hospitals can bypass this process if they've received written assurance from their state that the state plans to take over federal reporting responsibilities.
HHS Protect integrates information from 225 separate data sets, Arrieta said.
Previously, hospitals and states reported COVID-19 data to the CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network, a tracking system for healthcare-associated infection. From there, the data would be shared with HHS Protect.
"CDC has agreed to remove the (NHSN) from the collection process in order to streamline reporting," Redfield said.
The change "reduces the reporting burden, reduces the confusion and duplication of reporting, (and) streamlines reporting," Redfield added.
In a special bulletin, the American Hospital Association urged its members to "report the data to HHS as requested. HHS stressed in the announcement the importance of reporting the requested data on a daily basis to inform the administration's ongoing response to the pandemic, including the allocation of supplies, treatments and other resources."
HHS Protect is "powered by eight different commercial technologies," according to Arrieta.
The HHS Protect webpage directs to a log-in page from Palantir Technologies, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based big data analytics company.
Hospitals and states submit COVID-19 data reports through a system managed by TeleTracking Technologies, a Pittsburgh-based health data company best known for its patient flow software. With the TeleTracking system, HHS officials will be able to update the type of data hospitals and states are prompted to submit more quickly and as information about COVID-19 emerges.
HHS more rapidly updating the data elements hospitals are expected to submit is the biggest change hospitals will experience from this shift in reporting requirements, according to Arrieta.
"We will be asking hospitals to report that data," he said.
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July 16, 2020 at 03:18AM
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CDC can still access HHS-collected COVID-19 data, officials say - ModernHealthcare.com
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