How HHS’s new hospital data reporting system will actually affect the U.S. Covid-19 response
WASHINGTON — It’s a fight over something as seemingly mundane as government data collection. But with precious hospital supplies and patient outcomes at stake, it sparked a scandal.
The Department of Health and Human Services changed the rules, quietly, earlier this week: hospitals would be required to report data on Covid-19 patients and deaths directly to their agency, rather than to both HHS and the CDC, as they had been doing. HHS said it would help the administration better allocate supplies and drugs. But CDC supporters saw it as further evidence of the agency being sidelined, and hospitals decried the implication that it was their reporting — rather than changing federal requirements — that was to blame for data issues and supply shortages.
