“Teletracking”, the system which took over HHS hospital utilization reporting from the CDC safety reports, is a private company.
- In April, TeleTracking received a $10.2 million non-competitive contract from HHS to power the agency’s COVID-19 data tracking system, HHS Protect
Britains NHS (or part of it, or an associated body), is also using TeleTracking for COVID-19 data, from about the same time.
As is common for this kind of private health database, researchers and administrators can “access” the data. That is, access is controlled and permitted by contracts.
Interesting note: Oracle “donated” it’s COVID-19 online platform to the HHS. Dunno if teletracking runs on Oracle, or if Oracle just missed out on a big customer.
There are some obvious arguments for reforming the hospital utilization reporting system, which appears to have been piggy-backing on a safety reporting system, but it’s the nature of big IT projects, and big Health projects, and big Database projects, that they are broken on implementation, and sometimes never work at all. I wouldn’t personally recommend a shift like this in the middle of an epidemic (and, in case I was too even handed above to make it clear, I hate third-party private health databases anyway). But some software projects actually are well managed and effective, and it’s too early to say how this will affect the American health system after the teething problems are worked out.