COVID-19 Reporting Activity

COVID-19 Reporting Activity

In 350-450 words, respond to the following prompt. Be sure to have citations and references in your post.

PROMPT

Due to this being a current 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
(Links to an external site.)
Joint press release: 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
(Links to an external site.)
Next 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
(Links to an external site.)
About HHS: https://www.hhs.gov/about/strategic-plan/introduction/index.html
(Links to an external site.)
(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
(Links to an external site.)
About HHS Protect: https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/about
(Links to an external site.)
and https://www.fedhealthit.com/2020/05/news-info-park-hhs-protect-palantir-healthcare-data-project-for-coronavirus/
(Links to an external site.)

Posting Format:

Make sure to remain professional and scientific in your responses. Disparaging comments about groups or individuals will not be accepted. Simply compile the facts that you investigate and make a decision. Also, be sure to be collegial in your replies to classmates.

Methods: Post to the discussion board about the information you’ve collected surrounding the purpose and aims of both HHS and the CDC. Describe where there are 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, after doing your assessment, 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 to the collection and reporting of hospital availability data.