Hospital Lab Reports

April 3, 2020

On March 29, 2020, Vice President Mike Pence sent a letter to hospitals requesting that they report their COVID-19 testing data directly to the Department for Health & Human Services. In particular, the administration requested that academic, university, and in-house labs that were not already sharing their full testing results report such results to HHS every day at 5 p.m. ET, so that government agencies can track and analyze the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), in support of this effort, introduced a new COVID-19 Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity Module within NHSN’s Patient Safety Component (click here). The Module enables hospitals to report daily counts of patients with suspected and confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses and current use and availability of hospital beds and mechanical ventilators. The American Hospital Association (AHA) provides an overview of the hospital COVID-19 data collection efforts in response to Pence’s letter, along with relevant links, on its webpage here.