“This past summer, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services triggered alarm among public health advocates when it directed hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when reporting COVID-19 patient data.”
“President-elect Joe Biden’s next moves regarding COVID-19 data reporting, and HHS as a whole, are still unknown. But the coronavirus crisis makes it clear that the huge gaps in information sharing in the United States must be addressed, says former HHS Chief Technology Officer Ed Simcox.”
“‘My recommendation to HHS and Congress, and everyone else is: Now that the 21st Century Cures Act has been activated, that we step back and create a data reporting system that leverages these modern technologies,’ said Simcox in an interview with Healthcare IT News.”
“Simcox, now chief strategy officer at precision medicine company LifeOmic, left HHS in February – just before the COVID-19 pandemic walloped the United States. (HHS has not had a CTO since.) But, he says, HHS during his tenure began developing an All-Hazards Data Hub in cooperation with the CDC, aimed at streamlining public health reporting.”
“‘Congress three times has asked the CDC to prepare for pandemic and epidemics by creating an all-hazards information technology system,’ said Simcox – most recently with the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2019, which was signed into law with bipartisan support in June of that year.”
“Still, Simcox argued, when COVID-19 hit, ‘again we found ourselves in a position where the CDC was not able to prioritize the directives in any measurable way.’”
“This is similar to the position long taken by HHS regarding the switch to the HHS Protect reporting system: that the CDC’s existing data collection structure was not robust enough to deal with a crisis of COVID-19’s magnitude…” Read the full article here.
Source: Former Trump HHS CTO weighs in on COVID-19 patient data reporting – By Kat Jercich, November 12, 2020. Healthcare IT News.
