HHS says it, not CDC, will continue to receive COVID-19 hospital data
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HHS said it will continue to receive COVID-19 patient data directly from hospitals, clarifying comments made by White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah L. Birx, MD, that indicated this duty may again fall with the CDC.
In comments from the Arkansas governor’s mansion, Birx said a controversial decision to bypass the CDC and require hospitals to report data directly to HHS is an "interim" policy and that the CDC is working on a "revolutionary new system" that would eventually allow it to resume receiving this data again and "to have that accountability."
Credit: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian
In an emailed statement, an HHS spokesman said a news report indicating that Birx’s comments signified a shift in policy was wrong and that “the process for COVID-19 data reporting has not and is not changing.”
The “interim” policy Birx mentioned was “the current method of requiring hospitals to manually collect and then manually enter data every day,” the spokesman said.
“We know that asking hospitals to manually enter information every day has to be an interim process to reduce the burden placed on the hospitals,” he told Healio.
He said the CDC is collaborating with the United States Digital Service — a group of U.S. government technologists — to build a “modernized automation process” for the hospital data, which will continue to go directly to HHS.
Beginning in July, hospitals began reporting COVID-19 patient data directly to HHS instead of the CDC. Experts were critical of the decision to bypass the CDC, and recent news reports described the transition as “rocky” and “undermining the government’s ability to understand the course of the pandemic.”
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