Report: Electronic case reporting helped states during the pandemic — they need to use it more
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A new report from The Pew Charitable Trusts highlights an emerging method for improving the sharing and use of public health data.
Timely, complete and standardized data is the key for public health agencies to detect and mitigate health threats, according to a new report. And while the pandemic underscored public health agencies’ ability to develop data infrastructure to track and monitor the spread of COVID-19, barriers remain for states looking to broadly improve data sharing for future risks.
Modernized data sharing systems can enable, for instance, automatic electronic case reporting, or eCR, which offers valuable clinical data insights for public health officials to identify and mitigate emerging diseases and for policymakers to develop more effective health-related policies, according to a report released today from The Pew Charitable Trusts in partnership with Mathematica.
Case reports can offer a more comprehensive view of people impacted by infectious diseases — including their age, gender, ethnic background or underlying medical conditions — than lab reports that confirm the presence of an illness, said Margaret Arnesen, senior officer for state policy and research at Pew’s public health data improvement project and co-author of the report. Those insights, for instance, can help public health officials identify trends or disparities in community health to inform public health responses.
But no states — including the District of Columbia — require automated eCR in statute or regulation, according to the report. That’s likely because it is still a relatively new technology, Arnesen said. Still, many agencies leveraged eCR during the pandemic, which highlighted the technology’s potential to improve infectious disease and illness tracking in general.
Officials also reported that while some states do leverage eCR to transmit health data, about half of states cannot use the information because of technical or resource limitations, impacting the quality of already scarce eCR data, according to the report.
Automated electronic data reporting overall is further along than state policies indicate. Zero jurisdictions require it for case reports, and three jurisdictions do so for lab reports, but public officials in two-thirds of U.S. states said an estimated 90% of lab reports were transmitted through automatic electronic reporting, according to the report.
Those findings suggest that data sharing “practices are outpacing policy,” Arnesen said, adding that data-related policies might not limit public health efforts as much as researchers previously thought.
That means lawmakers should leverage policy as a “critical lever” in improving data systems, said Kathy Talkington, director of public health at Pew and co-author of the report. Legislation that communicates expectations and standards of what data is to be collected and shared and how to do that, for instance, can help prepare health care providers, hospitals, agencies and other stakeholders to support governments’ transition to more innovative data sharing like eCR.
It will take significant time and resources for eCR to be widely adopted and implemented by public health agencies, particularly those in small and rural communities, Talkington said.
Without sustained and predictable funding streams, researchers wrote, public health officials are hesitant to invest in the IT systems necessary to modernize data sharing of critical information like patient cases. Plus, other challenges like staffing shortages as well as skills gaps continue to hamper agencies’ effort to modernize their data systems.
States must consider how to identify the gaps in their data systems and reporting methods to develop targeted improvements, Arnesen said, especially as public health risks like bird flu and measles across the U.S. continue to concern health officials.
“Prioritizing and continued improvements to modernizing public health data and automating public health data is essential [and] fundamental to protecting the health of communities,” Talkington said.
Editor's Note: This story was updated Dec. 13 to correct the number of jurisdictions that require automated electronic data reporting.
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