"U.S. hospitals sending coronavirus data to Washington instead of CDC"
Is this supposed to be a problem? This is like saying "the data are going to Ottawa" if the government were to direct that all data go to a collection centre at Health Canada.
Key points, from below, which are objectively all improvements:
1) Reporting obligations reduced from 2 streams to 1 for providers (eg. hospitals).
2) Improved access for other providers (more sources).
3) More collection flexibility.
4) No loss of access for CDC.
5) Improved access to other data for CDC.
6) Improved access for other users.
I'd expect the technocratic sub-factions of the political map to approve of data modernization; their whole shtick depends on effective collection, interpretation, and dissemination of information.
From HHS:
"...
CDC operates a system called the National Health Safety Network. This is an important surveillance system in our nation’s hospitals, which focuses on fighting antibiotic resistance.
In April,
HHS leaders, with input from CDC, created a new system, called HHS Protect, that allows us to combine data through systems like NHSN, as well as other public and private sources. The data reported from hospitals that went into HHS Protect either came through the NHSN, directly to HHS Protect from the states, or through a system called TeleTracking.
What we have now asked is that, going forward, states provide data from hospitals directly through the TeleTracking system or directly to the HHS Protect system.
First,
this reduces the reporting burden—it reduces confusion and duplication of reporting. Streamlining reporting enables us to distribute scarce resources using the best possible data.
TeleTracking also provides rapid ways to update the type of data we are collecting—such as adding, for instance, input fields on what kind of treatments are being used. In order to meet this need for flexible data gathering,
CDC agreed that we needed to remove NHSN from the collection process, in order to streamline reporting.
This streamlining will allow the NHSN to increase its focus on another critical area for COVID-19, the nursing home and long-term care facility reporting needs—which, as we know, is also an absolutely central element of our pandemic response. All elements of our public health system are being stretched right now, and
streamlining the hospital reporting system allows NHSN to concentrate its COVID-19 activity on the high-priority area of protecting the vulnerable in nursing homes.
To accomplish this, we have not changed the data ecosystem; we have merely streamlined the data collection mechanism for hospitals on the frontlines.
On the back end, whether collected by the CDC’s system, the third party vendor, or the states, the data ends up aggregated in the HHS Protect platform, where the CDC team and other federal response teams still have access to this information for their use in the response. Additionally, state and local public health departments also have access to this information in HHS Protect which allows them to access and use the same information that the federal response teams are using.
No one is taking access or data away from CDC.
I want to emphasize that having the fastest possible access to this data, as well as easy ways to analyze it, has very real benefits to our public health response. When we need to collect insights about emerging symptoms, for instance, which we are constantly learning more about, we can do that incredibly rapidly through TeleTracking.
This has no effect on CDC’s ability to use this data and continue churning out the daily data, the MMWRs, and the guidance we publish. In fact,
the new infrastructure we have now actually provides our CDC team with easier access to a much broader variety of data sets than they would have without it.
...[rah, rah, rah]"
