I find it hard to believe that so many labs would be messing with their reporting in the way described. This would basically shut them down via temporary or permanent loss of certifications required to function and to get insurance. Opens them up to lawsuits and probably some criminal liabilities as well. My money is these funny numbers are being generated at the state and/or fed agency end.
Lab reporting of this type is computerized at the lab level. For that matter, individual samples are largely tracked by barcode and and most instruments report their data directly into the data system. Lab reports come in 3 flavors so to speak, ie. brief, standard and full. Brief has the results and key quality control summary, the standard report adds in additional quality control info. The full report includes the whole kitchen sink of quality control info and will make your eyes glaze over. I have tried using brief reports a few times just to make my job easier but even so, the labs strongly prefer using their standard format so I just end up with two stacks of paper to file. I limited requesting full reports unless lawyers were involved.
I’ll stop rambling now! Yea!
That's probably why president Trump announced today that now all hospital data will go to a Washington database.