This Health Affairs post urges that state Departments of Health to provide “consistent standardized public reporting on cumulative COVID-19 hospitalizations, cumulative COVID-19 patients admitted to the ICU, current COVID-19 patients hospitalized, and current COVID-19 patients in the ICU.”
The authors urge states to be more consistent with data reporting so that COVID-19 data can be shared and more useful “in quantifying the real-time impact on hospital systems, modeling and forecasting upcoming utilization needs, identifying opportunities for sharing medical resources across states, and tracking the rate of change of disease severity.” States are reporting various types of data, and the number of deaths is the only consistent and reliable daily data from all 50 states. COVID-19 hospitalizations (current and cumulative) are not consistently reported. Currently, Indiana is among 14 states not regularly reporting hospitalization data.