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Starting next month, hospitals will be required by CMS to report their overall bed capacity as well as their census of patients with respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19–a requirement hospitals say will be more of a burden than a help.

"Hospitals and health systems understand the potential value of selected data on acute respiratory illnesses to inform public health efforts," Akin Demehin, senior director of quality and patient safety at the American Hospital Association, said in an email to MedPage Today. However, we continue to believe a Condition of Participation (CoP) to compel hospital reporting is needlessly heavy-handed and inconsistent with the core intent of CoPs."

"That is why we have advocated that CMS, CDC, and other federal agencies pursue a more collaborative approach that builds the infrastructure to make the sharing of infectious disease data less burdensome and more meaningful," Demehin said. "In the short term, we will continue to engage with CMS and CDC to ensure that hospitals have timely and complete information on how to meet these new requirements, and to ensure that their compliance is assessed fairly and accurately." Head over to MedPage Today to read more about it.