By: Mark Glennon*
Route Fifty, a publication for state and local government administrators, has a good report on the collection of COVID-19 virus by the Center for Disease Control.
Both the State of Illinois and the federal government ignored that key data until recently, as we reported here on April 6: It was until March 29 that Vice President Michael Pence sent a directive to hospitals to send in their daily inventories of open beds, ICU units, ventilators, occupancy, virus victims and the like. The State of Illinois did not do so until April 2.
Those numbers are critical because they tell us where capacity is truly tight, which states need the most help and which areas within states need attention. The numbers are also essential to making rational decisions about when and how stay-at-home rules should be loosened.
But as Route Fifty reports, the CDC has reported its numbers sloppily and sporadically. Illinois, too, remains deficient in reporting the numbers it collects. If you want them, you have to make a special request each day and then you only get grand totals. That tells us nothing about whether or where there are genuine problem areas within the state.
Governor JB Pritzker’s daily briefings have mentioned the key numbers only occasionally and selectively. He has only focused on problem areas, such as a few hospitals in north suburban Chicago which have been near capacity, and ICU inventories which initially appeared to be in short supply. The media has done the same.
However, as my colleagues here at Wirepoints detailed earlier this week, Illinois on the whole has far more capacity than it needs now and on the date cases are expected to peak.
The numbers initially reported to us for April 9 showed a decrease in total number of coronavirus patients in Illinois hospitals over the previous day, which was stated in the initial version of this article. Interestingly, however, on April 10 they sent a revision to those numbers showing that the total increased.
Projections and claims by politicians about needed hospital capacity and supply are turning out to have been far too pessimistic, both in Illinois and across the nation. That error undoubtedly is attributable in part to failure to collect current numbers, which we said before was inexcusable. Without real time updates on current capacity and utilization, projections almost certainly will be wrong.
This article was updated on April 10 to change the next-to-last paragraph as indicated.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
The sates and feds need to gather the same numbers every day. This should have been done from day one. Unfortunately the corona virus has turned into a political football being punted around the place in an attempt to gain political advantage or avoid political responsibility.
All hospitals reporting to the Federal government by a daily deadline would not be sufficient?
Real-time means as soon as the information is entered into a hospital computer system(s), it’s sent to the Federal Government.
That would be very expensive to implement nationwide.
An alternative would be a near real time system, but perhaps that cost / benefit is not practical.
It seems the Federal Government is learning on the fly the issues involved in the various hospitals getting the data to the CDC on a daily basis.
Yes, by real time I meant just daily, which is what Pence’s directive said. Here is the form hospitals are supposed to be sending to CDC everyday, which is very similar to Illinois’ https://wirepoints.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/federal-report-form.pdf
Doubt I’ll be the only person confused by the article as it stands. It also makes no sense for the State Government to waste hospital time by using a different form than the Federal Government. Seems like it would make more sense for the State to transition to the Federal form and add additional fields at the end of the form as desired. Wonder if some counties have their own form? Surprised to see a pdf and not a spreadsheet is being used, unless there is a spreadsheet option, and/or an option for some sort of digital data submission. Perhaps… Read more »
Yes, I agree. The reports to the state are supposed to be done twice a day actually, by 10am and 6pm. As I wrote in the initial article, there seems to be no excuse for not coordinating this. They were not only unprepared, but responded late. IDPH has told hospitals on Wednesday that the hospitalization data is the most important information they are now collecting, which reinforces the question why both state and feds were so late to start getting it.
The original WP article was April 10th and it was updated on April 12th? Anyways this WP article still has “real time updates” instead of “daily updates” which is confusing for the reason discussed in the comments above. It might seem like a trivial point but in terms of Information Technology it’s a huge point. In looking at the April 9, 2020 Route 50 article again, it turns out from clicking on the link to the March 29, 2020 Pence letter http://www.routefifty.com/health-human-services/2020/04/we-still-dont-know-how-many-people-are-hospital-covid-19/164481 http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/text-letter-vice-president-hospital-administrators and from there the link to the CDC NHSN Covid-19 website http://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/acute-care-hospital/covid19/index.html. and from there the 2:43… Read more »
Sorry if I misused term “real time.” What we get from the state is now a daily report showing their numbers from the previous day. Reports are supposed to go from the hospitals to the state every day by 10am, but some are apparently tardy, so I am guessing the state decided to lag a day to report a true total.
I was hoping you would change the article, not say sorry.
How many pages is the daily state COVID-19 hospitalization report, and can it be posted to a website?
The daily stat is just an email about half a page.
Does one have to submit a FOIA request to obtain the daily stat?
Or is the daily stat just an email list to which anyone can subscribe?
All I know is I send an email request to COVID.MEDIA@ILLINOIS.GOV every day around Noon, and the numbers back. Crazy, I know.