PROMPT:
Due to this being a somewhat recent news item, let’s explore how hospital data are aggregated and reported. This is a great time to work outside of news stories, using critical thinking to explore the work of various government agencies, especially in the realm of informatics and data aggregation for public health.
Guiding Questions:
What is the CDC? What is HHS? How do they have different missions and how do they overlap?
What is the National Healthcare Safety Network? What is its purpose? What are its pros and cons?
What is the purpose of collecting, aggregating, and reporting hospitalization data?
Use the Following Steps:
Start by reading about the shift from hospital capacity switching from the U.S. CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network to a new portal developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:
News report: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/20/hhs-unveils-new-coronavirus-hospitalization-database-says-its-more-complete-than-cdcs.html
Joint press release: https://web.archive.org/web/20210318001330/https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/07/15/prepared-remarks-from-hhs-media-call-cdc-director-redfield-cio-arrieta-covid-19-data-collection.html
read about these two different governmental units and how they collect health data, specifically COVID-19 data:
About the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/mission.htm
About HHS: https://www.hhs.gov/about/strategic-plan/2022-2026/introduction/index.html (also see its org chart and the 4 goals of its strategic plan)
About the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network: https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/about-nhsn/index.html
About HHS Protect: https://public-data-hub-dhhs.hub.arcgis.com AND https://www.fedhealthit.com/2020/05/news-info-park-hhs-protect-palantir-healthcare-data-project-for-coronavirus
Methods: include information collected surrounding the purpose and aims of both HHS and the CDC. Describe where there is obvious separation and overlap. Describe the NHSN, HHS Protect, and Palantir Technologies.
Results: Now, address both of the following: The (1) pros and (2) cons of hospitalization (and other COVID-19) data going directly to HHS Protect or through CDC’s National Safety Network. For those of you who have worked in healthcare, are there pros and cons to switching systems? Are there differences in your relationships with different government agencies?
Conclusion: Ultimately, provide your final conclusions as to where the data should go and how it should be routed. Be sure to check out current updates and news about how the transition has gone and how much better, worse, or the same this new shift is for the collection and reporting of hospital availability data.