Oakland-headquartered Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest nonprofit health organization, confirmed to The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday that a lab system problem for weeks impacted its reporting of coronavirus cases from its Northern California labs.
The provider in a statement said the issue is believed to be resolved.
"Kaiser Permanente is committed to transmitting timely, accurate data to the state. Due to technical issues with our technology system, data transmission to the state's system from Kaiser Permanente's laboratories in Northern California has been delayed since late July," Kaiser Permanente wrote in an emailed statement to The Bee.
"We have taken steps with our technology vendor to fully resolve the problem, and believe the issue to be resolved," the statement continued. "While this problem was occurring, we made the data available in an alternative format. We will continue to monitor the transmission of current data to ensure timely, complete, and accurate reporting."
The California Department of Public Health, in a daily update to statewide COVID-19 numbers, noted that Wednesday's total of more than 23,000 cases "includes several thousand cases that were delayed from Northern California Kaiser Permanente."
Sacramento, El Dorado and Placer counties in separate updates Tuesday reported clearing backlogs, each adding significant numbers of previously unreported coronavirus cases from last month. Placer and El Dorado's updates linked the backlog to issues involving a Northern California health provider, but did not specify which provider.
Placer County said its case count in a Tuesday update included "a backlog of some older cases due to a processing error that one health system had been experiencing across Northern California," but did not give a specific number of backlogged cases.
Sacramento County did not mention the data reporting issue specifically, but wrote in an update to its online dashboard Tuesday that "nearly 2,000 older cases" had been included in the daily tally. The county has confirmed just over 18,000 cases from August, so a 2,000-case backlog would be more than 10% of the month's total.
Before the backlog cleared, Sacramento County data showed a case rate that was fluctuating but generally plateauing near about 550 cases a day for much of the second half of August.
"It does look like we've reached a plateau, but there might be a delay in some of our reports, so we're still cautiously optimistic," county health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye had said on a call with reporters last week.
But now, county data for August show a smoother curve that peaked around the middle of the month at close to 715 cases per day — about 30% higher than previously known.
Both versions showed early signs of decline in late August. Cases peaked Aug. 13 and have steadily fallen to about 600 per day since then, the updated dashboard shows. Test positivity has dropped as well, from 9.8% in mid-August to 8.1% as of Tuesday's update.
El Dorado County's case total for Tuesday included "roughly 250 cases from the first three weeks of August," due to "issues with the electronic lab reporting (ELR) connection between certain providers/testing sites and CalREDIE," a county spokesperson wrote in a daily emailed update of COVID-19 figures. CalREDIE is the state's disease information reporting system, and many counties rely on it for their own local coronavirus data.
A backlog of 250 cases would be about 15% of El Dorado's nearly 1,700 cases from Aug. 1 to Aug. 21, local data show.
Kaiser Permanente has three hospitals in the region — Kaiser South Sacramento Medical Center, Kaiser Sacramento Medical Center on Morse Avenue and Kaiser Roseville — as well as more than a dozen clinics and medical offices across Sacramento and Placer counties. There are no Kaiser hospitals or offices in El Dorado, but some of that county's residents receive health care in Sacramento or Placer.
Kaiser Permanente is one of four major health providers serving the Sacramento area, the others being Dignity Health's Mercy Medical Group, Sutter Health and UC Davis Health.
Diagnostic tests for COVID-19 are conducted at county-run and community testing sites that are typically operated in partnerships with the above health networks or through contracts with third-party lab companies, such as Quest Diagnostics or OptumServe, as well as at hospitals and health clinics, some of which process the results at labs operated by the providers.
The reason behind the Kaiser Permanente lab issue wasn't immediately clear, but it began around the same time providers all across California began processing much higher volumes of test results.
Demand for diagnostic COVID-19 testing has skyrocketed since the delta variant began to fuel a surge in cases earlier this summer. Statewide, the daily number of tests performed tripled from an average of about 110,000 in early July to 330,000 by late August, according to California Department of Public Health data.
Last year, also around the start of August, a major glitch with CalREDIE caused data reporting problems at the statewide level after a server outage and other issues resulted in a system failure. Days after details about that outage emerged, Dr. Sonia Angell, then-director of the California Department of Public Health, resigned.
ISSUE COMES AS HOSPITALS 'AT CAPACITY' WITH COVID PATIENTS
Data reporting issues and delays can be a serious hindrance to pandemic response. County public health offices depend on that data not just to monitor trends, but also to trace contacts and otherwise respond to outbreaks linked to schools, workplaces, large events or other settings.
It can also be a predictor of hospitalization trends, helping facilities prepare in advance for surge needs. Kasirye said last week that hospitals in Sacramento County are "at capacity" due to high volumes of virus patients in both general and intensive care beds.
At least 10 other California counties including Placer broke records for COVID-19 patient totals, virus cases in intensive care units or both during August, exceeding their worst tallies from the winter surge as the highly infectious delta variant continues to spread.
©2021 The Sacramento Bee, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
