Data infrastructure in the US healthcare system and Covid 19 inefficient.
Harrison stated, "We were expending a lot of effort putting an excessive quantity of data into different systems that weren't necessarily scalable to talk to each other or to the federal level."
Staff frequently had no idea what was going elsewhere in the state or outside of it due to the inadequate system interaction. According to Harrison, the employees relied on "watching the news channels every morning to acquire the most recent updates from other levels of government."
The pandemic, which has claimed more than 1 million American lives, brought to light the U.S. health system's inefficient data infrastructure in a nation that is home to some of the most significant technological businesses in the world: Case reports of the coronavirus sent by fax. Lackluster technology for tracking vaccine distribution and significant tracking gaps. Data at the state level are not consistent with federal data. supply chain failures that prevented health care personnel from obtaining essential protective gear.
And long before COVID, Congress was aware of the potential for these issues. Long before the epidemic, in 2006, lawmakers ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to better connect American data management systems to enable stakeholders to share information more effectively.
If federal health officials had complied with the directive, problems brought on by these communications breakdowns, according to public health officials, data experts, and government auditors, could have been reduced.
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https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/08/health/public-health-data-gaps-hhs-khn-partner/index.html