A group of Democratic lawmakers is asking the Trump administration to suspend a Consumer Product Safety Commission program that collects identifiable health data from Americans who visit emergency rooms, KFF Health News reported Sept. 8.
Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts led the letter to CPSC acting Chairman Peter Feldman, joined by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. The lawmakers said the agency’s data collection “is untethered from the Commission’s statutory mission and authority” and warned it is “ripe for misuse.”
KFF Health News reported the CPSC pressured hospitals to hand over personally identifiable patient information covering more than 10,000 injury and condition types, including vaccine reactions and suicide attempts, for analysis by Konza Health, a Kansas-based contractor holding a five-year, $15.9 million CPSC deal. The push expanded a decades-old voluntary program, the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, rebranded this year as NEISS-R.
Becker’s reported in July that the CPSC had already requested ER records from health systems including Detroit-based Henry Ford Health and Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health as it moved to expand the program to more than 100 hospitals. The American Hospital Association warned the CPSC in an August letter against mandating participation, citing the same identifiable-data concerns now raised by Democrats; the agency has since dropped information-blocking language from its public materials, and Mr. Feldman told Nextgov/FCW the program would remain voluntary.
The lawmakers linked the CPSC effort to a wider pattern of federal health data acquisition, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push for records to study vaccines and autism, a data-gathering effort. They asked the CPSC to respond by Sept. 18.
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