A major data stumble had to happen sometime during our plague season, and apparently, Kaiser Permanente turned out to be the point of failure. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, technical issues with Kaiser’s lab system processing have resulted in thousands of delayed COVID test results since the end of July. During that period, Kaiser made the data available in an alternative format.
While Kaiser operates in several areas across the country, these problems seem to have affected only its Northern California operations. The organization now says that the problem has been resolved. While Kaiser hasn’t publicized the reason for the lab issue, it apparently took place at a time when California providers began processing much higher volumes of test results, according to Government Technology
I’m bringing this story to your attention, because it raises an important issue, not because Kaiser has done something awful. While it’s possible a review of Kaiser’s lab infrastructure might find issues with how the system was maintained or configured, let’s assume for argument’s sake that this was an unfortunate technical blip that most CIOs face at some point.
That being said, the story does bring up some issues related to how critical the COVID stream of lab test data related to COVID should be handled. According to the Government Technology piece, earlier this month the California Department of Public Health noted that of the 23,000 COVID cases it was tracking, several thousand included those delayed from Kaiser’s Northern California region.
The holdup in test results played havoc with public health efforts to track cases in the region. Sacramento County noted that with just over 18,000 cases in August, a 2,000-case backlog represented more than 10% of the month’s total. Other counties in this region have struggled to reconcile their own disease surveillance efforts with the data Kaiser couldn’t deliver.
Having seen how this played out, I think it’s time to take a hard look at how reliable and scalable testing systems are in our country. To my knowledge, it’s never been more important than it is today to have testing information flowing freely and without incident to better track COVID case patterns.
As you probably know, this information is critical in managing COVID on a regional and national basis, so while an “oops” might have sufficed when lab systems went down in the past, today that won’t fly. With a still raging pandemic ravaging the country, they’ve become a more critical piece of the healthcare infrastructure.
I don’t know how to solve this problem, though I imagine some form of redundancy and the capability to work around problems like Kaiser’s would be involved. However, if you haven’t given extra thought to how reliable your lab system is, and how much downtime you’ve experienced, now is the time.
