- The Trump administration’s decision to change the mechanism for reporting COVID-19 hospitalization data has created stress on systems in states like Missouri, Kansas and Idaho.
- States like Idaho have not reported hospitalization numbers since the July 15 change went into effect, and Wyoming was unable to report how many patients were in the ICU due to the change in the report.
- Previously reported data directly to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now reported using a new, more secret tool created by private contractors for the Department of Health and Human Services.
- A spokesperson for the Missouri Hospital Association called the change, which required hospitals to submit to a new HHS portal rather than directly to the CDC, a “major disruption,” St. Louis Public Radio reported.
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A directive from President Donald Trump’s administration to change the way hospitals report COVID-19 hospitalizations has created difficulties for states to report updated data since the change went into effect on Wednesday.
“All the evidence suggests that Missouri numbers are going in the wrong direction,” Missouri Hospital Association spokesman Dave Dillon told St. Louis Public Radio. “And for now, we will have very limited situational awareness. All of that is very bad news.”
He called on the Trump administration’s move to change the way hospitals report the data as “a major disruption.”
Hillary Brueck of Business Insider previously reported that as of Wednesday, the Trump administration has ordered hospitals in the US to stop reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the number of hospital beds available and how many Beds are full of COVID-19 patients.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CDC, will now keep the data on HHS Protect, a newer, more secret database created with private contractors. The data had previously been sent directly to CDC’s National Health Safety Network (NHSN), according to the report.
Due to the change, the data is no longer publicly available, causing existing CDC dashboards showing statistics related to COVID-19 hospitalizations to have disappeared. It has also created difficulties for state agencies to track and publish data on their hospitalizations.
“From our perspective, these changes are important,” Kansas Hospital Association spokeswoman Cindy Samuelson told the NPR-affiliated station. “We only found out on Tuesday, and we had to update the data on Wednesday night, so less than 48 hours.”
United States Continues to See Record Increases in Coronavirus Infections
On Friday, the United States reported for the second time more than 70,000 new COVID-19 infections. The number just hit the all-time high for new cases, 75,600, set the day before, according to a New York Times count. In Missouri, there have been at least 31,290 cases of COVID-19 and 1,121 deaths as of Friday, according to data from the state health department.
A message posted on the Missouri COVID-19 dashboard for hospitalization says “Due to an abrupt change in the data measures and reporting platform issued by the White House on Monday, July 13 and effective on Wednesday, July 15, the Association of Missouri Hospitals (MHA) and the state of Missouri will not be able to access critical hospitalization data during the transition. “
Samuelson told St. Louis Public Radio that Kansas hospitalization data could be delayed if he was unable to properly receive full information from member hospitals.
“If we can’t get a lot of our members to convert and load, I’m not sure I want to show it because then things will seem to have improved a lot,” she said.
As the Idaho statesman reported Wednesday, Idaho data on hospitalizations have not been updated since Wednesday.
“On July 15, HHS Secretary Azar notified hospitals to stop reporting COVID-19 data to the NHSN,” said a message on the state board for hospitalizations. “Some facilities in Idaho began reporting directly to HHS via TeleTracking before 7/15. Post-7/15 data may not capture all ICU admissions or hospitalizations, while facilities transition to new processes sending data “.
Idaho Department of Health and Welfare spokesman Niki Forbing-Orr said the abrupt change “presents some important challenges for Idaho to continue to monitor the number of hospitalizations in the state,” according to the statesman’s report.
Oil City News reported on Friday that at least 19 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the state of Wyoming, although data on how many patients were placed in Intensive Care Units was not available as a result of the change in the data report.
In Missouri, Dillon said the data would be incomplete for weeks until he could effectively collect the data he once obtained through the CDC, according to the NPR report.
The Trump administration move comes amid continued public criticism from the CDC, which has reached new heights around its guidance on opening schools. The agency’s new guidelines have been delayed until the end of the month amid continued criticism from the president, calling the existing guidelines “harsh” and “expensive.”
