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Missouri Hospital Association loses access to data, Kansas officials say their data may be delayed with new system

After encountering problems with the CDC, earlier this week the Trump administration directed hospitals to change how they report COVID-19 data to the federal government and how that data will be made available, causing access issues for hospitals in Missouri and Kansas.

A recent transition in data systems for COVID-19 reports in the U.S. has resulted in missing or incomplete hospital data in Kansas and Missouri.

The Missouri Hospital Association said that it no longer has access to the data it has been using to guide state coronavirus mitigation efforts, and Kansas officials say their hospital data may be delayed due to the system change.

Earlier this week the Trump administration directed hospitals in the U.S. to change how they report data to the federal government and how that data will be made available in the future.

An absence in data for hospitals in Missouri and Kansas – and elsewhere – has already caused difficulty for health and public officials to have a full view of how the coronavirus is spreading.

The new system calls for hospitals to report data to the Department of Health and Human Services through a new system created by a Pennsylvania-based company, TeleTracking, instead of to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Not only has the new system shown to be significantly different from previous one with the CDC, it was a change that came on short notice, according to Kansas Hospital Association spokeswoman Cindy Samuelson.

“From our perspective, these changes are big,” Samuelson said. “We only found out Tuesday, and we had to update the data by Wednesday night, so less than 48 hours.”