Health advisers to the government say hospitals are 'scrambling' after Trump administration's 'abrupt' change to Covid-19 data reporting requirements

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Fri, 2020-08-14 11:51 — mike kraft

Health advisers to the government say hospitals are 'scrambling' after Trump administration's 'abrupt' change to Covid-19 data reporting requirements Public health advisers to the US government said they are "extremely concerned" and "troubled" by the Trump administration's decision to change how hospitals report Covid-19 data. Jen Christensen, CNN CNN

CNN)In a letter, public health advisers to the US government said they are "extremely concerned" and "troubled" by the Trump administration's decision to change how hospitals report Covid-19 data.

The letter, dated July 31, described hospitals as "scrambling" to determine how to meet new daily Covid-19 reporting requirements to the US Department of Health and Human Services, and said retiring the older system jeopardized data integrity. One doctor who signed the letter said the new data system was marred by inconsistencies, rendering it "almost impossible" to use for real-time decisions during the pandemic.

"Moving forward," the letter says, "it will be even more challenging to perform meaningful inter-state comparisons, and to understand which COVID-19 mitigation strategies were successul (or failed)."

he nearly three dozen current and former members of the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee shared their concerns in a letter intended for HHS and obtained by CNN. The committee is an independent group of experts that provides guidance to the HHS and the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention on infection control practices and strategies.

When asked by CNN, HHS did not confirm if it had received the letter. Members of the committee said that the CDC, which is part of HHS, was informed of the letter.

In a memo on the HHS website last month, the Trump administration ordered hospitals to report all Covid-19 patient information to HHS, rather than to the CDC and HHS, as they had been doing. ...

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