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A question - teejers1 - 06-30-2020

Does anyone know why Santa Clara County changed its dashboard reporting format, as well as the information disclosed?    
 
Just last week, I was curious about the increase in cases reported and what that meant for hospitalizations.  And yes, the number of Covid patients in SCC hospitals basically doubled in a 2-3 week period, from high 30s to high 70s.  So, in scrolling around I was able to make the following observations from the county dashboard on the day it reported 78 hospitalizations (74 in beds):
 
*            Covid patients comprised 43 of the 1156 acute beds then in use; there were a total of 736 (38% of capacity) unused beds;
 
*            Covid patients comprised 31 of 236 ICU beds then in use; there were a total of 213 (44%) unused ICU beds;
 
*            The LTCF numbers showed that in last 14 days, there had been an increase of 26 hospitalizations (actually, more) from LTCF.  One facility had 12 patients and 14 staff add to the hospitalization stats in the last 14 days.  The LTCF stats do not specify the exact number of hospitalizations at a facility when the total is 11 or below (no clue why they picked this number).  Anyway, 4 other LTCF line-items had entries of (<11) in the hospitalization stats.  Exactly how many was not discernible, at least to me.
 
I believe hospital capacity information – as well as LTCF information (and what % of those folks comprise the hospitalization figures) is pretty important information for citizens and decision-makers alike.
 
Today, I checked the dashboard, and the presentation is completely different.  Most notably, no more hospitalization capacity figures are provided (nor are the % of beds for Covid patients – either acute or ICU – reported).  Why is that, do you think?
 
The LTCF numbers are still reported, albeit in different formatting.  And with hospitalizations now up to 85, I was able to discern the following info from LTCF reporting: 
 
              *            from bar graph of new cases, in the last 14 days (June 13), the number of new LTCF cases is 49.
 
              *            From hospitalization figures for last 2 weeks, the dashboard shows 28 people from one facility, and an unknown number (between 1 and 11) from six other facilities.
 
 
Don’t you think it’s relevant (if not important) to know exactly how many of the increased numbers of hospitalizations are from LTCFs?
 
Don’t you think it’s relevant (if not important) to know where hospital capacity stands in the county (including the percentage of beds being taken up by Covid patients)?
 
Maybe none of you do; but if you do, I return to the original question: why did SCC change its reporting?

RE: A question - g1313 - 06-30-2020

I don't know why, and I agree with you that I always kept an eye on the available ICU beds metric. 

Here's the annoucement of when they changed to the new format (yesterday): https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/press-release-06-29-2020-new-data-dashboards.aspx . It says "The redesigned hospital dashboard will now provide data on hospitalized patients from internal polling and not from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH)" so maybe that has something to do with it.

That did give me a lead to the CDPH data, which you can find for Santa Clara here: https://data.ca.gov/dataset/covid-19-hospital-data/resource/42d33765-20fd-44b8-a978-b083b7542225?filters=county%3ASanta+Clara

Unfortunately it's just a data table and not a nice dashboard. From it, you can see that the total hospital beds in SCC are 3,438. The available ICU beds (they don't provide the total) seem to max out at 239.

Edit: I found a graphical representation from CDPH here: https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19HospitalsDashboard/Hospitals?:embed=y&:showVizHome=no



(06-30-2020, 05:10 PM)teejers1 Wrote:  Does anyone know why Santa Clara County changed its dashboard reporting format, as well as the information disclosed?    
 
Just last week, I was curious about the increase in cases reported and what that meant for hospitalizations.  And yes, the number of Covid patients in SCC hospitals basically doubled in a 2-3 week period, from high 30s to high 70s.  So, in scrolling around I was able to make the following observations from the county dashboard on the day it reported 78 hospitalizations (74 in beds):
 
*            Covid patients comprised 43 of the 1156 acute beds then in use; there were a total of 736 (38% of capacity) unused beds;
 
*            Covid patients comprised 31 of 236 ICU beds then in use; there were a total of 213 (44%) unused ICU beds;
 
*            The LTCF numbers showed that in last 14 days, there had been an increase of 26 hospitalizations (actually, more) from LTCF.  One facility had 12 patients and 14 staff add to the hospitalization stats in the last 14 days.  The LTCF stats do not specify the exact number of hospitalizations at a facility when the total is 11 or below (no clue why they picked this number).  Anyway, 4 other LTCF line-items had entries of (<11) in the hospitalization stats.  Exactly how many was not discernible, at least to me.
 
I believe hospital capacity information – as well as LTCF information (and what % of those folks comprise the hospitalization figures) is pretty important information for citizens and decision-makers alike.
 
Today, I checked the dashboard, and the presentation is completely different.  Most notably, no more hospitalization capacity figures are provided (nor are the % of beds for Covid patients – either acute or ICU – reported).  Why is that, do you think?
 
The LTCF numbers are still reported, albeit in different formatting.  And with hospitalizations now up to 85, I was able to discern the following info from LTCF reporting: 
 
              *            from bar graph of new cases, in the last 14 days (June 13), the number of new LTCF cases is 49.
 
              *            From hospitalization figures for last 2 weeks, the dashboard shows 28 people from one facility, and an unknown number (between 1 and 11) from six other facilities.
 
 
Don’t you think it’s relevant (if not important) to know exactly how many of the increased numbers of hospitalizations are from LTCFs?
 
Don’t you think it’s relevant (if not important) to know where hospital capacity stands in the county (including the percentage of beds being taken up by Covid patients)?
 
Maybe none of you do; but if you do, I return to the original question: why did SCC change its reporting?


RE: A question - M T - 06-30-2020

(06-30-2020, 05:10 PM)teejers1 Wrote:  Does anyone know why Santa Clara County changed its dashboard reporting format, as well as the information disclosed?

My opinion is that they changed because the new format loads faster (for the viewer) and requires less resources so can handle a larger load.
The new format has just the main info on the first window.  You have to click to get to each of the other dashboards that used to be on the main dashboard.

I hadn't seen they were pulling data locally now vs from the state.  Makes good sense.  They didn't have any update on Saturday because the state DB was down. 

Some data changed..  The reporting of testing results now reports "tests" rather than individuals.  That helps for comparing  % positive today versus last month (but prevents knowing the % of individuals that test positive -- instead you know a lower number).

They are definitely presenting results that weren't there before.  (The data was there, but getting the running averages required history.)  I think they're reporting the various data the state is watching in all counties.   Different in each county, but required by the state are the measures each county is watching to know how it is doing by its own measures.

(06-30-2020, 05:10 PM)teejers1 Wrote:  Most notably, no more hospitalization capacity figures are provided (nor are the % of beds for Covid patients – either acute or ICU – reported).  Why is that, do you think?
I guess they must have changed things after you looked.  On the hospitalization graphs (all beds, ICU beds, other beds), each day they show the running 7 day average of bed usage as well as beds for the day..  When I look Tuesday night, Covid confirmed patients occupy 2.96% of all beds for the last week.  8.¡5% of ICU beds, 1.9% of non-ICU beds.  At this point, I'm fine with 7-day running percentages.

As you know COVID PUI's are also shown now.   If you want, you can compute the beds for each group (for the week)
For instance non-ICU beds have had 272 confirmed patient-days (= 1.95%) and  272+79 = 351 confirmed+PUI patient-days (= 2.51%).  I'm not sure why the math doesn't work right, but I get somewhere between 1993 and 2015 non-ICU beds (average for a week)   (Btw, perhaps you noticed that although they used to give numbers for acute and ICU beds, there were "other" beds to get to their total hospitalized.  So "non-ICU" = "acute" + "other")

(06-30-2020, 05:10 PM)teejers1 Wrote:  Don’t you think it’s relevant (if not important) to know exactly how many of the increased numbers of hospitalizations are from LTCFs?

I think you misunderstood the LTCF hospitalizations numbers.   The now-gone format section on LTCF said "Hospitalization is only determined at the time a case was reported to us and do not represent patients that are currently or ever hospitalized".   So, we never knew how many current hospitalizations were from LTCFs.

What is probably going to change soon is to distinguish patients that reside in SCC county from patients that come from other than SCC.  The state has suggested that information be available (to the state & county), which may mean it is made available to the public.

RE: A question - teejers1 - 06-30-2020

(06-30-2020, 09:44 PM)M T Wrote:  My opinion is that they changed because the new format loads faster (for the viewer) and requires less resources so can handle a larger load.
The new format has just the main info on the first window.  You have to click to get to each of the other dashboards that used to be on the main dashboard.

Really?

I couldn't find the hospital capacity information on the new site, and I clicked on the hospital dashboard link from the main page here:

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#cases

If you could clue me in on where that info is on the new site that would be much appreciated (as I view that as the most important statistic in terms of policy-making).  Of course, I've been banging this drum since literally Day One of this outbreak . . . and I remain a bit puzzled why reporting on this factor isn't front-and-center on all media reports regarding the virus, especially with "surge" reports.

RE: A question - lex24 - 06-30-2020

(06-30-2020, 10:20 PM)teejers1 Wrote:  
(06-30-2020, 09:44 PM)M T Wrote:  My opinion is that they changed because the new format loads faster (for the viewer) and requires less resources so can handle a larger load.
The new format has just the main info on the first window.  You have to click to get to each of the other dashboards that used to be on the main dashboard.

Really?

I couldn't find the hospital capacity information on the new site, and I clicked on the hospital dashboard link from the main page here:

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#cases

If you could clue me in on where that info is on the new site that would be much appreciated (as I view that as the most important statistic in terms of policy-making).  Of course, I've been banging this drum since literally Day One of this outbreak . . . and I remain a bit puzzled why reporting on this factor isn't front-and-center on all media reports regarding the virus, especially with "surge" reports.

I agree with Teejers.  And it seems to me that it’s pretty simple. Count X has ___ hospital bed, ___ of with are ICU.  Then give the number in use from Covid.  Pretty straight forward, neh?

RE: A question - M T - 06-30-2020

(06-30-2020, 10:20 PM)teejers1 Wrote:  I couldn't find the hospital capacity information on the new site, and I clicked on the hospital dashboard link from the main page here:

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#cases

If you could clue me in on where that info is on the new site that would be much appreciated (as I view that as the most important statistic in terms of policy-making).  Of course, I've been banging this drum since literally Day One of this outbreak . . . and I remain a bit puzzled why reporting on this factor isn't front-and-center on all media reports regarding the virus, especially with "surge" reports.

Teejers, be sure to reread the above message, I edited apparently after you read it.
I wonder if you have an old, cached main page or something like that.

The main page I see has  Cumulative & New Cases, Cumulative & New Deaths, and Current & New Hospitalizations at the top (no more graphs).
Further down is "Table of Contents" with links below.  The link you give is not there.
Quote:Table of Contents
  • COVID-19 Cases Dashboard
    Provides detailed information about cases and deaths from COVID-19.
  • Demographics of Cases and Deaths
    Provides information on characteristics and demographics of COVID-19 cases and deaths, including: age, gender, race/ethnicity, source of transmission for cases, and underlying conditions for deaths.
  • Cases by ZIP Code and City
    This map summarizes cumulative counts and rates of COVID-19 cases by zip codes and cities in Santa Clara County.
  • Hospital Dashboard
    Provides the number of patients in acute hospital beds, intensive care unit beds, and on ventilators.
  • COVID-19 Testing
    Provides information on the total daily testing for COVID-19.
  • Long-Term Care Facility (LTCF) Dashboard
    Provides information on cases of COVID-19 in Long-Term Care Facilities (LTCFs).


RE: A question - teejers1 - 07-01-2020

[quote="M T" pid='284485' dateline='1593582766']

Teejers, be sure to reread the above message, I edited apparently after you read it.
I wonder if you have an old, cached main page or something like that.

The main page I see has  Cumulative & New Cases, Cumulative & New Deaths, and Current & New Hospitalizations at the top (no more graphs).
Further down is "Table of Contents" with links below.  The link you give is not there.
[quote]Table of Contents [/quote]

Don't want to belabor thread, so I'll try and be brief:

1.  On capacity, the old dashboard presented color-coded bar graphs which showed total acute beds available, total in use, and total used by Covid patients (same for ICU beds).  

I could not find similar information in the new site - certainly not presented in tidy, easy-to-understand, color graphs.  And nothing in your post suggests it's there.  I agree that the current board shows percentage of Covid patients occupying various beds, but it does not tell you how much capacity remains (unused beds) . . . does it?  I think it is also useful to know what percentage of beds in use are occupied by Covid patients versus other patients.

2.  On LTCF, I agree numbers are opaque. I don't even know what the passage you quoted - "Hospitalization is only determined at the time a case was reported to us and do not represent patients that are currently or ever hospitalized" - even means.  Do you?  I mean, a case is reported (as what?  must be a hospitalization, no?, given that it is in this section of dashboard) but that does not represent patients that are currently or ever were hospitalized?  WTH???

Again, I think it would be very useful to know the number (and percentage) of those hospitalized are attributable to LTCFs.  Not sure why those figures are so elusive.