HHS makes COVID-19 hospital-level data available for 1st time

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HHS said it plans to release hospital-level data weekly to provide a better view of how COVID-19 affects hospitals in local communities.

The agency posted its first hospital-level data report Dec. 7 and included time series data going back to Aug. 1. The information shows which hospitals have extra room to treat COVID-19 patients and which are full.

"HHS will not be a gatekeeper of the data but will serve as a gateway to the COVID-19 open data," the department stated in a news release. The public can access COVID-19 data at HealthData.gov, including new admissions by age, severity of the disease, capacity constraints and the impact on the emergency department.

The data will also include patterns for influenza and influenza with COVID-19 coinfections.

"HHS expects these datasets will help local and regional resource planning efforts, including collaboration between different hospitals regarding staff and equipment," HHS stated. "Communities will be empowered with high-resolution information to guide their decisions about building operations, closures and openings. City and county officials who do not already have comprehensive access to this type of hospital-level data can now be informed by regional trends and individual hospital capacity."

The department also encouraged data scientists to detect, predict and visualize the insights and patterns from the datasets to help scale best practices from one region to another.

 

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