‘Irregularities’ found in the Trump administration’s contract for company used to collect coronavirus data: report

TeleTracking Technologies, a Pittsburg-based company known for developing software that hospitals use to track the status of patients, was awarded a multi-million-dollar contract from President Donald Trump’s administration to collect COVID-19 data from hospitals in the U.S. — and National Public Radio is reporting that it found “irregularities” in the “process” that gave TeleTracking the contract.

According to NPR reporters Dina Temple-Raston and Tim Mak, NPR’s investigation found that “the Department of Health and Human Services initially characterized the contract with TeleTracking as a no-bid contract. When asked about that, HHS said there was a ‘coding error’ and that the contract was actually competitively bid. The process by which HHS awarded the contract is normally used for innovative scientific research, not the building of government databases.”

According to the NPR reporters, Carrie Kroll of the Texas Hospital Association “didn’t give it a second thought” when, in April, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it would be using TeleTracking as an option for collecting data on COVID-19. But she “balked” after “the HHS suddenly announced, in July, that hospitals could no longer report COVID data through the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), but would instead, be required to do so through the HHS-TeleTracking system or their state health departments,” Temple-Raston and Mak explain. Continue reading.