Democrats demand Trump administration halt collection of patients’ ER records

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A group of Democratic lawmakers is calling for the Trump administration to suspend a new surveillance program it quietly launched to collect the personal and identifiable health data of Americans who visit emergency rooms.

KFF Health News first reported that the Consumer Product Safety Commission — a federal agency tasked with monitoring injuries from household items — was pressuring hospitals to provide a private company with personally identifiable health information for analysis. The rollout of the program has inspired broad pushback from hospitals and privacy advocates.

The CPSC’s goal is to obtain millions of Americans’ medical records from emergency rooms for most injuries, even when a consumer product is not involved, internal emails and documents reviewed by KFF Health News revealed. The agency instructed hospitals to share detailed patient information for more than 10,000 types of injuries or conditions, such as vaccine reactions, suicide attempts, or stingray stabs.

The scope of data CPSC is collecting far exceeds the agency’s mission and should be immediately suspended, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and other House and Senate Democrats wrote in a letter to CPSC acting Chairman Peter Feldman.

“This unprecedented and sweeping effort to collect identifiable patient data is untethered from the Commission’s statutory mission and authority, and is ripe for misuse by an administration that has repeatedly sought access to Americans’ most personal information,” the letter stated. “Americans should be able to seek medical care without fear that their personal health information will be swept into a federal database and repurposed for political ends.”

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Trump administration demands hospitals share emergency room records

Among other Democrats signing the letter were Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

CPSC spokesperson Steve Roney did not answer several questions about the program and the call for it to be suspended.

“We received the letter, and will respond directly, through the appropriate channels,” he said in a statement.

The CPSC is one of several agencies that have launched broad acquisitions of Americans’ sensitive medical records during Trump’s second term. The Office of Personnel Management has requested federal workers’ sensitive health information. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. deputized at least one private organization to collect more medical records for his studies on vaccines and autism.

The CPSC has operated a voluntary program for decades that enables trained hospital workers based in about 70 hospitals nationwide to report injuries involving consumer products, called the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, or NEISS. Compared with the current initiative, the agency’s data collection has historically been far narrower, and previously requested patients’ identifiable information, generally for follow-up, in fewer than 1% of cases.

Without public notice, CPSC staffers overhauled the program early this year — rebranding it as NEISS-R — and told hospital executives that participation is mandatory, requiring they report far more identifiable patient details from more injuries to a private company called Konza Health. The Kansas-based company won a five-year contract last year worth up to $15.9 million with the CPSC.

In emails and contract language reviewed by KFF Health News, Konza representatives described hospital participation as “mandatory” or “required.” Emails sent this year by CPSC chief data officer Elizabeth Puchek said hospitals would need to apply for an exemption from participation or face penalties. Those penalties, for what’s called unlawful “information blocking,” were established in a federal data-sharing regulation designed to make sure patients could access their medical records. The agency’s website reiterated that threat, claiming information-blocking regulations require hospitals “to make electronic health information (EHI) available to public health authorities, such as CPSC, upon request, unless a specific exception applies.”

The power play inspired widespread resistance. The American Hospital Association sent a letter in August asking for modifications to the program, citing “confusion and concern about the scope of patient information” demanded by the agency.

Now the agency is backtracking, removing in recent weeks mentions of “information blocking” penalties from its public page.

The CPSC’s Feldman, a Trump appointee, said in an interview last month with Nextgov/FCW that the new program would “remain a voluntary” one .

The Democrats highlighted these discrepancies and changes, also noting that the agency has bypassed regulations and failed to publicly lay out any detailed plan for its data collection, as required by law.

“The Commission has since quietly removed the information blocking rationale from its public NEISS webpage, without any public correction or acknowledgment that the claim it spent months promoting was without basis,” the letter said. “This reversal does not undo the coercion hospitals experienced, but rather raises the question of whether the Commission’s purported legal justifications were ever more than post-hoc cover for an agenda that had little to do with its statutory authority.” The Democrats’ letter asks CPSC to respond by Sept. 18.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF .

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一群民主党议员呼吁特朗普政府暂停一项悄悄启动的新监控计划，该计划旨在收集前往急诊室就诊的美国人的个人和可识别的健康数据。

KFF健康新闻率先报道，负责监管家用物品伤害的联邦机构——美国消费品安全委员会（CPSC）正向医院施压，要求其向一家私营公司提供可识别个人身份的健康信息以供分析。该计划的推出引发了医院和隐私倡导者的广泛反对。

据KFF健康新闻查阅的内部邮件和文件显示，美国消费品安全委员会（CPSC）的目标是从急诊室获取数百万美国人的医疗记录，涵盖大多数伤害，即使这些伤害与消费品无关。该机构指示医院共享超过1万种伤害或疾病的详细患者信息，例如疫苗反应、自杀未遂或黄貂鱼刺伤。

马萨诸塞州参议员埃德·马基（Ed Markey）是参议院卫生、教育、劳工和养老金委员会的成员，他与其他众议院和参议院民主党人在致美国消费品安全委员会（CPSC）代理主席彼得·费尔德曼（Peter Feldman）的信中写道，CPSC 收集的数据范围远远超出了该机构的使命，应该立即暂停。

信中指出：“这项史无前例、范围广泛的收集可识别患者数据的行动，脱离了委员会的法定使命和权限，极易被一再试图获取美国民众最私密信息的政府滥用。美国民众应该能够在就医时不必担心他们的个人健康信息会被录入联邦数据库，并被用于政治目的。”

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特朗普政府要求医院共享急诊室记录

签署这封信的其他民主党人包括康涅狄格州参议员理查德·布卢门撒尔、伊利诺伊州众议员简·沙科夫斯基和俄勒冈州参议员罗恩·怀登，后者是参议院财政委员会的资深成员。

美国消费品安全委员会发言人史蒂夫·罗尼没有回答有关该计划以及要求暂停该计划的几个问题。

他在一份声明中说：“我们已收到信件，并将通过适当渠道直接作出回应。”

在特朗普第二任期内，消费品安全委员会（CPSC）是众多大规模获取美国公民敏感医疗记录的机构之一。人事管理办公室（OPM）也曾要求获取联邦雇员的敏感健康信息。卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪还授权至少一家私人机构收集更多医疗记录，用于其疫苗和自闭症研究。

美国消费品安全委员会（CPSC）数十年来一直运营着一项自愿参与的项目，该项目允许全国约70家医院中经过培训的医护人员报告涉及消费品的伤害，该项目名为“国家电子伤害监测系统”（NEISS）。与目前的举措相比，该机构以往的数据收集范围要窄得多，此前仅在不到1%的案例中要求提供患者的身份信息（通常用于后续随访）。

今年年初，美国消费品安全委员会（CPSC）工作人员在未公开通知的情况下对该项目进行了全面改革，将其更名为NEISS-R，并告知各医院高管必须参与该项目，这意味着他们需要向一家名为Konza Health的私营公司报告更多可识别的患者信息，这些信息涉及更多类型的伤害。这家总部位于堪萨斯州的公司去年与CPSC签订了一份为期五年、价值高达1590万美元的合同。

据KFF健康新闻查阅的电子邮件和合同文本显示，Konza公司的代表将医院参与描述为“强制性”或“必须的”。美国消费品安全委员会（CPSC）首席数据官伊丽莎白·普切克（Elizabeth Puchek）今年发送的电子邮件称，医院需要申请豁免才能参与，否则将面临处罚。这些处罚针对所谓的非法“信息封锁”，是根据一项旨在确保患者能够访问其医疗记录的联邦数据共享法规制定的。该机构的网站重申了这一威胁，声称信息封锁法规要求医院“应公共卫生机构（例如CPSC）的要求提供电子健康信息（EHI），除非存在特定例外情况”。

这场权力博弈引发了广泛的抵制。美国医院协会在8月份致函要求修改该项目，理由是该机构要求的患者信息范围“令人困惑和担忧”。

现在该机构正在改变立场，最近几周从其公共页面上删除了有关“信息封锁”处罚的表述。

美国消费品安全委员会 (CPSC) 的费尔德曼是特朗普任命的官员，他在上个月接受 Nextgov/FCW 采访时表示，新计划将“保持自愿性质”。

民主党人强调了这些差异和变化，并指出该机构绕过了相关规定，未能按照法律要求公开制定任何详细的数据收集计划。

信中指出：“委员会已悄悄地从其公开的NEISS网页上删除了信息封锁的理由，既没有公开更正，也没有承认其数月来一直宣传的说法毫无根据。这一转变并不能消除医院所遭受的胁迫，反而引发了一个问题：委员会所谓的法律依据是否仅仅是事后掩盖其与法定权限几乎无关的议程。”民主党人在信中要求CPSC在9月18日前作出回应。

KFF健康新闻是一个全国性的新闻编辑室，致力于制作有关健康问题的深度报道，是KFF的核心运营项目之一——KFF是一个独立的健康政策研究、民意调查和新闻机构。了解更多关于KFF的信息。