By Jessica Mathews/news@whmi.com & Jon King/jking@whmi.com


The state has updated its information sharing after a local lawmaker and her colleagues demanded more transparency as it pertains to coronavirus in Michigan hospitals.

Last week, House lawmakers sent a letter to Michigan Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh Khaldun urging the release of more detailed information related to coronavirus in the state. Michigan currently ranks third behind the two highest-impacted states - New York and New Jersey. Among those signing the letter was Republican State Representative Ann Bollin of Brighton Township, who says Beaumont Health, one of the state’s largest health systems, has experienced a lack of communication about bed availability at nearby hospitals. The information is available to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services but reportedly had not been disseminated to the hospitals that need the information. Bollin says without that data, it’s impossible to determine where or what resources are needed.

Michigan Department of Health & Human Services Director Robert Gordon issued an Emergency Order on March 24th requiring hospitals to report a number of categories including the frequency of updates to bed capacity, personal protective equipment inventory lab testing capacity, number of ventilated patients, number of ventilators, patient census, staffing shortages, units or areas dedicated to COVID-19 treatment as well as other data.

Spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin tells WHMI the department has received this information from many hospitals, with the Beaumont health system reporting robustly into the system. However, Sutfin says not all hospitals are regularly reporting and MDHHS is working to improve response rate into the system and plans to include improved additional information in the coming days.

In fact, late Wednesday, the department announced it would provide additional and improved statistics on its website including the number of people recovered, testing data by state preparedness region and hospital utilization information. This will include the number of emergency department discharges, number of inpatients, number of patients in critical care and number of patients on ventilators.

Bollin’s press release and the full statement from Sutfin are available below.