On March 29, hospitals received a letter from CMS on behalf of Vice President Mike Pence asking them to report additional information about COVID-19 testing and hospital resources during the pandemic to the federal government.
Here are five things to know about reporting:
1. The Trump administration requested that all hospitals report data on the COVID-19 testing performed at academic, university and hospital in-house laboratories. If tests are sent to private labs or performed at LabCorp, BioReference Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics, Mayo Clinic Laboratories or ARUP Laboratories, they don't need to report results.
2. Hospitals can report in-house lab testing through an HHS spreadsheet and then email the spreadsheet provided by CMS to fema-hhs-covid-diagnostics-tf@fema.dhs.gov so the government can collect the information.
3. The federal government is also requesting information about bed capacity and supplies through the National Healthcare Safety Network COVID-19 Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity Module. Many hospitals already use NHSN to report healthcare-associated infections for CMS reporting, and the new COVID-19 module was launched on March 27.
4. The administration requested that hospitals make these reports to the federal government daily.
5. Hospitals are not required to report, but the federal government has requested it. In an interview with NPR, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said there has been a "great response" in reporting and the administration hasn't gotten pushback on the new reporting measures.