Pittsburgh company tracking COVID-19 data gets $13 million federal contract renewal

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A year ago, move to shift information collection from CDC to private company had stirred concerns.

A Downtown-based company has received a $13 million endorsement from the federal government in the form of a contract extension to track COVID-19 cases and related hospital preparedness information.

TeleTracking Technologies Inc. — whose contract last year had been the focus of some scrutiny as a result of the shift of the work to the private sector and the changes to the requirements for hospitals — received the six-month award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The six-month award is a renewal of a $10.2 million contract the company received last year for the same work.

TeleTracking Technologies is collecting and reporting COVID-19 and health system capacity data from more than 4,000 hospitals and health systems around the country. The information is then posted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

“We are proud of what we have accomplished together and look forward to our continued work to confront the pandemic,” TeleTracking co-CEO and president Chris Johnson said in a prepared statement. “Transparency and visibility into our U.S. health care system is absolutely critical to managing the pandemic.”