Dear Director Redfield and Assistant Secretary Kadlec:
I write to understand actions undertaken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) to collect hospital and health care provider data during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Clear, accurate, comprehensive data is desperately needed in our fight against COVID-19. Given the importance of collecting this data as quickly as possible, I have several questions about the Trump Administration’s decision to award a multimillion dollar contract on a non-competitive basis to create a seemingly duplicative data collection system.
For fifteen years, the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) has served as the nation’s most widely used system for tracking health care associated infections. In its everyday, pre-COVID capacity, it is used in over 25,000 health care facilities across the United States for mandatory reporting of infection-related data and for voluntary use for quality improvement. In times of emergency response, NHSN has the capacity to develop new modules quickly that allow hospitals and other providers to report relevant data without requiring the time and expense to stand up an entirely new reporting system.
In response to COVID-19, NHSN established a new reporting module for hospitals, which launched on March 27, 2020, enabling hospitals to report on cases, health care personnel shortages, and supply shortages. Subsequently, on March 29, Vice President Pence wrote to all hospitals in the country instructing them to report to NHSN’s COVID-19 Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity module. Furthermore, on April 19, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid announced it would require nursing homes to report suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases directly to CDC, through NHSN. Within weeks, over 60 percent of the nation’s hospitals were reporting daily through the NHSN COVID-19 module.
Despite this clear direction to employ a well-established reporting mechanism, in early April, ASPR issued a six-month contract for $10 million on a non-competitive basis to TeleTracking to create an alternate hospital reporting pathway to the Department of Health and Human Services (the Department). The new system seems to create a second mechanism through which hospitals could report the same information already collected through NHSN.
The nation is facing an unprecedented public health crisis. Amid a pandemic that calls for robust data on both COVID-19 and the U.S. response to it, critical data remain out of reach to communities working to mitigate the pandemic and planning their response. For example, four months after COVID-19 arrived on U.S. shores, there still is no clear reporting on how many tests and supplies are available, what production and manufacturing gaps remain, and what specific steps are being taken to address shortfalls. There also are major gaps in data on the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color, although available information suggests they have been hardest hit by the pandemic. Yet, while these and other critical data remain out of reach of communities, scientists, and policymakers, it appears the establishment of the TeleTracking system - at significant cost - duplicates the collection of data that was already being reported.
To better understand the role of these two seemingly duplicative systems, I request your response to the following questions:
Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter. Please contact Andi Fristedt (Andi_Fristedt@help.senate.gov) on my staff with any questions. I respectfully request a response no later than June 17, 2020.
Sincerely,
Patty Murray
United States Senator
