Posted on 03/29/2020 3:52:29 PM PDT by Kaslin
Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday sent a letter to hospital administrators requesting they provide any Wuhan coronavirus testing data available to the Trump administration. The goal is to arm the White House Coronavirus Task Force with data so they can make informed decisions about how to best protect the American people from the Wuhan coronavirus.
The administration is asking every hospital with testing information to update the spreadsheet they were sent every day by 5 p.m. ET.
The full letter is below:
Dear Hospital Administrator:
On behalf of President Trump and the White House Coronavirus Task Force, I want to extend my gratitude for your tireless efforts to provide healthcare to Americans during this unprecedented pandemic. Your hospital is on the frontlines of America's response, each day providing lifesaving treatment for patients. Your efforts are indispensable, and the Trump administration values them deeply.
The Coronavirus Task Force continues to take aggressive and proactive steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic as the health and safety of the American people remain a top priority. FEMA is coordinating the full Federal response along with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to ensure State, local, tribal, and territorial governments receive the supplies and support they need, including medical supplies. This is truly a whole-of-government response that is Locally executed, State managed, and Federally supported.
As you know, partnership is essential as we work together to address the COVID-19 pandemic. To that end, we are requesting your assistance with reporting data that is critical for epidemiological surveillance and public health decision making. We understand that you may already be reporting to your State, but the data is needed at the federal level to support FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their efforts to support states and localities in addressing and responding to the virus.
At the President's direction, we are requesting that all hospitals report the following information to HHS:
1. COVID-19 Test Results Reporting
- a. We are requesting that all hospitals report data on COVID-19 testing performed in your Academic/University/Hospital "in-house" laboratories. If all of your COVID-19 testing is sent out to private labs and performed by one of the commercial laboratories on the list below, you do not need to report using this spreadsheet.
- i. Commercial laboratories: LabCorp, BioReference Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics, Mayo Clinic Laboratories.
2. Reporting Instructions: We request that all data for COVID-19 testing completed at "in-house" laboratories or a laboratory not listed above be reported using the attached spreadsheet.
- i. Due date/time: This spreadsheet is due EVERY day at 5 p.m. ET.
- ii. Data to report: The data elements are outlined in the attached spreadsheet, but should include all test results that were completed during the previous day with a midnight cutoff.
- iii. Where to submit: Submit the spreadsheet via email to fema-hhs-covid-diagnostics-tf@fema.dhs.gov
- iv. Data elements to report: Included in the attached spreadsheet with definitions.
c. For questions about reporting, please contact fema-hhs-covid-diagnostics-tf@fema.dhs.gov
2. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) COVID-19 Module
- a. To monitor the rapid emergence of COVID-19 and the impact on the healthcare system, all hospitals should report data each day to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) COVID-19 Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity Module, which has been made available for hospitals to use beginning March 27, 2020. All hospitals that are currently use NHSN on healthcare-associated infections for purposes of CMS reporting, the data we are now asking you to report is necessary in monitoring the spread of severe COVID-19 illness and death as well as the impact to hospitals. Additional details can be found in the attached documents and at the following website: https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/acute-care-hospital/covid19/index.html
- b. For more questions on this module, please contact NHSN@cdc.gov and put "COVID-19 Module" in the subject line.
The data will help us better understand disease patterns and develop policies for prevention and control of health problems related to COVID-19. All data provided by hospitals will maintained in accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, 5 U.S.C. 552 a.
We appreciate our strong partnership with you and we are grateful for your cooperation with this request to obtain the data needed to support a robust State and Federal response to COVID-19.
Sincerely,
Michael R. Pence,
Vice President of the United States
Excellent idea for the White House.
Yes information is valuable and needed. Only hard numbers show the real picture.
Send a spreadsheet?
L8r
Still not enough testing of the general population to be able to feed the epidemiological models.
So, the greatest nation on earth can’t create a simple Web-based app that would allow this data to be entered daily? That’d take a good developer or three about a week or so to create..another week to test throughly..etc. We didn’t think about this a week or a month ago?
Emailing spreadsheets is so 2005.
And don’t get me started on Pence’s tendency to add about 3X the words he actually needs to get to a point. My God, the fluff..
That would have been innovative in 1995. I cannot believe my eyes.
Why not quickly build a web platform, give every hospital a secure log-on and have them enter their info real-time into a cloud database?
Who the hell is going to re-key all the data coming in from those 7,000 hospitals? Even if all the data is entered into the right place, consolidating 7,000 spreadsheets is a HUGE problem and fraught with problems.
If you're questioning the archaic means (maybe you aren't) ... but I think this is smart.
What happened the last times a/the government (think Iowa, Obama Care) had PLENTY of time to get their shiite together on a simple mobile / web app?
This is old-reliable, probably doesn't have P2 data, and will actually work. And finally minor data problems, unlike the accuracy required for an election, aren't as important as it's a statistical thing.
If you put the government in charge of putting together modern tech to do this we'll ALL be dead faster than if they did nothing.
Now, if that's not what you were questioning ... then ... my comments stand alone and not as a reply :-) (I'm a software guy -> if it's just a matter of them getting good-enough stats to paint a picture of parts of the country and determine where to send resources -> this will work, perfect is the enemy of the good, minimum deliverable product etc.) Also if hospitals are going to lie in order to get preferential treatment, well in part we're all screwed but they could lie over an app to. I'm sure they'll need to pay special attention to the truthfulness of certain areas of the country ahem California and some others.
“That’d take a good developer or three about a week or so to create..another week to test throughly..etc. “
Hell, this is simple enough it could be done in a day on AWS or Azure. The biggest part of the task is building a directory, setting up all the accounts, and distributing secure log-on credentials to everybody.
You are right — this should have been anticipated a month ago.
This is SO disappointing.
I agree with you there, but I expect that to change rapidly if this new test kit delivers what it promises. Results in minutes, not days.
Good Lord, they put the submission email address out there in public. There will be some evil people who will bombard that address with junk just to prevent this from working. That was monumentally stupid.
Nothing from Ohio. DeWhine has ordered negative tests to not be reported and he is restricting testing to the very sick. Nice negative feedback loop that yields the nice scary number needed to be a petty tyrant. Deaths-to-cases is going to be a scary number because by definition the sickest are the ones dying.
+10 for the idea...if executed a month ago.
-10 for execution innovation.
A spreadsheet!? I thought Google was helping us out here.....although I could see some union insisting on using a spreadsheet rather than a cloud based solution as it would / could take away a couple of jobs @ each hospital.
Data from spreadsheets can be imported
Reply from some will be ‘No, you’ll just misuse it anyway...”
So, the greatest nation on earth can’t create a simple Web-based app that would allow this data to be entered daily? That’d take a good developer or three about a week or so to create..another week to test throughly..etc. We didn’t think about this a week or a month ago?
Emailing spreadsheets is so 2005.
And don’t get me started on Pence’s tendency to add about 3X the words he actually needs to get to a point. My God, the fluff..
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Wow...such negativity. Sometimes, particularly when time is of the essence, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. They need the data now and, as you likely know, data from emailed spreadsheets can be quickly and seamlessly incorporated into a larger consolidated database.
And now you’ve added being a grammar/writing Nazi to your repertoire to add an additional facet to your negativity. ;-)
They should not have to ask for it. they should just get the data.
Administration is SENDING a spreadsheet to be completed daily.
I work in P&C insurance - whenever there is a hurricane (or even storms like what went thru OK and MO yesterday), we must report claims weekly. Heck, if the forecast is pretty certain, they will send out advance notice that we will need to report.
Since they sent the spreadsheet to be completed, the admin probably has a program to snag the info from them. NO ONE is re-keying the data. Who knows, maybe they are building the app at the same time and will change where to send the data.
I DO wonder why they aren’t asking the states to send data after they have gathered it - and you KNOW the states are gathering the data. That would be 50 submissions rather than thousands of submissions. (States have just as many folks working from home as anyone else!)
Have faith and think positive!
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