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 The plan would build upon a hospital data collection system designed
by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Trump
administration. Management of the program was transferred last month
to HHS's lead public health agency, the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC).
The change comes amid criticism over the CDC's shifting public
health guidance during the pandemic and its ability to collect and
analyze COVID data in a timely and transparent way.
Authorization for the current hospital data tracking program is due
to expire once the government lifts the national state of pandemic
emergency.
The proposed plan would ensure it remains in place long term and add
new requirements of the nearly 6,200 participating hospitals, such
as providing data on the number of patients with flu-like illnesses
and other diseases with pandemic potential in addition to COVID and
influenza.
Such reporting would be a condition of hospitals' participation in
the federal Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs for
older and poor Americans.
The hospitals would be required to provide data - without names - on
patients' vaccination status, pre-existing conditions, age,
ethnicity and other details that would shed light on health outcomes
among various populations.
Beth Blauer, who runs the Pandemic Data Initiative at Johns Hopkins
University, called the proposed plan a "big shift" and "a
reconstitution of trust in the CDC."
"There's concern that when the pandemic emergency lifts, the data
flow will dry up," she said. "This is what they (CDC) were designed
to do."
The rules are being reviewed by the White House Office of Management
and Budget, which is expected to publish them to allow for public
comment before they are finalized. CDC officials declined to comment
on the proposed data expansion.
However, the proposed changes have raised concerns among some
administration officials.
"There are just no signs that any thought has been put into how the
CDC can raise its game enough to allow for real-time sharing of
information that informs the public beyond just the federal
government," said a senior Biden administration official familiar
with the debate over the proposal who was not authorized to speak
about it.
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The CDC said in a statement the agency is
continuing to partner with HHS "to ensure the
data are available and accessible."
HIGH-PROFILE SETBACKS
The HHS Protect system was created in 2020 under
Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus task force
coordinator for the Trump White House, at a cost
of tens of millions of dollars. It quickly
became an effective clearinghouse for daily
hospital data on coronavirus infections and
deaths.
At the time, CDC officials conceded that the agency could
not rapidly adapt its National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN)
reporting system to collect additional hospital and medical
inventory data needed to inform pandemic decision-making. As a
result, CDC recommended HHS develop a new system for this purpose,
according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
The CDC said the decision was based on the lengthy regulatory review
that would have been required to change its own reporting system,
among other factors.
"By no means was this an acknowledgement of the inadequacy of NHSN,"
Sherri Berger, CDC chief of staff, said in an email.
More recently, the CDC has had several high-profile setbacks on its
data reporting, including overestimating the benefit of COVID
booster shots for younger people and failing to track and publish
data on breakthrough infections among the vaccinated in a timely
way.
Blauer and other experts said the CDC was the appropriate agency to
oversee the data program. Some noted that it has received an
additional $500 million in funds under the American Rescue Plan to
further modernize its data collection.
"What we really need to do," said Dr. Celine Gounder, a member of
the Biden Administration's transition team, "is hold them
accountable for following through on that."
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Marisa Taylor in
Washington; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Bill Berkrot)
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