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... 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." ...