Fax machines, old tech slow COVID-19 test results and data reporting

The New York Times reported that health departments are accepting COVID-19 reports via phone, email, physical mail and fax, which can lead to duplication, lost information or sending records to the wrong health department.

For example, Houston public health officials are blaming old technology for a lagging response to the surge of COVID-19 cases in Texas. Harris County Public Health department, which includes Houston and the surrounding areas, relies on a fax machine to collect data about the virus. The agency reported that as large amounts of information have come through, the fax machine printed out hundreds of pages of test results that ended up sprawled across the floor.

The office tracking COVID-19 information for Austin, Texas, and Travis County in Texas reported receiving about 1,000 faxes per day, and some of the records are duplicates while others are missing information the office has to track down. It takes 11 days on average for all the information from a COVID-19 test to be entered into the system manually.

As a solution to a similar challenge, 25 members of the National Guard have been sent to Washington state, at the state's request, to manually enter data.

Technical failures have slowed the process of reporting COVID-19 test results, and the computer systems at some physician offices aren't interoperable with the lab's computer systems. The lab software also does not always include information that public health departments need associated with the results, and when providers fax spreadsheets of information, the public health department then must manually re-enter the information into their computer system. The manual re-entry increases the risk of error. In many areas, public health department budgets have not allowed for digital upgrades.

"The best way I can describe it is to imagine you're on an information superhighway, but you're traveling with a bus pass," Oscar Alleyne, chief program officer at the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told the Times.

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