Democratic Lawmakers Urge CPSC to Halt NEISS Modernization Efforts and Respond to Detailed Requests for Additional Information

On September 3, 2026, a group of Democratic U.S. Senators and members of the House of Representatives wrote a letter to the Acting Chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC or Commission), Peter Feldman, urging him to immediately suspend the Commission’s efforts to modernize the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), an initiative branded as NEISS-Remodel, or NEISS-R. The bicameral group of Democratic lawmakers cited recent news reports and an emerging pattern of “the Trump administration seeking unprecedented access to Americans’ private data” (citing the Office of Personnel Management’s demand for federal workers’ health information, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sharing Medicaid enrollee data with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) as the cause for their concern.

What is NEISS?

NEISS is a public health surveillance system operated by the CPSC since the early 1970s. NEISS draws data from a statistically representative sample of about 100 hospital emergency departments across the United States. Trained personnel abstract relevant information from the hospital emergency department records for injuries meeting NEISS criteria. The following data points are usually submitted for each record: (1) the consumer product(s) involved, (2) the body part(s) injured, (3) the diagnosis, (4) the disposition (e.g., treated and released, hospitalized, etc.), (5) basic demographic information (e.g., age, race, ethnicity, etc.), and (6) a brief narrative describing how the injury occurred.

What is NEISS-R?

As described in the CPSC FY2026 Operating Plan, NEISS-R will modernize the Commission’s current injury reporting system by integrating electronic health records and AI for better and faster hazard detection. According to a July 2026 CPSC press release, NEISS-R is expected to become fully effective in 2027. More specifically, CPSC states that NEISS-R will:

• Expand the sample of hospital emergency departments to include representation across all 50 states, adding hospitals in Alaska, Hawaii, the Mountain West, and northern states that were previously underrepresented or not represented at all
• Enable CPSC to spot rare and rapidly emerging hazards far sooner than the legacy system allowed
• Exchange data through a federally designated Qualified Health Information Network, supported by contractual privacy requirements and standardized security safeguards

CPSC also states that transitioning NEISS to a cloud-based architecture will create a more secure environment for injury surveillance.

Congressional Letter — Core Allegations

In the September 3 letter to Acting Chairman Feldman, Democratic lawmakers raised concerns regarding the necessity and legality of NEISS-R, the adequacy of its privacy protections, and the purposes to which this data may ultimately be put. According to the letter, the lawmakers believe that the data collection efforts expanded under NEISS-R “could easily discourage people in need from seeking care at an emergency department or from being transparent with their medical providers out of fear of federal surveillance or inappropriate use of their information.” More specifically, the lawmakers state in the September 3 letter that:

• CPSC is pressuring large hospital systems to send identifiable emergency room (ER) patient records (names, birthdates, addresses, diagnoses) to a private contractor, KONZA Health, as part of “modernizing” NEISS and breaking from NEISS’s decades-long practice of using de-identified data.¹
• The data being requested covers approximately 10,000 medical conditions, many unrelated to consumer products (e.g., vaccine reactions, stingray injuries). This breaks from NEISS’ decades-long practice of directing hospitals not to report emergency department visits associated with medical devices or medicines, or injuries that do not involve consumer products.² The lawmakers state that this exceeds CPSC’s statutory jurisdiction over consumer products.
• CPSC/KONZA initially told hospitals that participation was mandatory and if a hospital refused to hand over the requested identifiable ER data, that refusal could itself count as illegal “information blocking,” since CPSC claimed authority to receive the data as a public health authority. This carried the threat of steep penalties (up to $1 million per violation, enforced by HHS’ Office of Inspector General). The Commission has since stated that it is “not putting a new mandate in place” and that NEISS participation “historically has been and will remain” voluntary. CPSC has removed the information-blocking rationale from its website.
• CPSC has released conflicting statements on data retention (KONZA’s contract says identifiable data is deleted after 30 days, but Acting Chairman Feldman reportedly stated in an interview that contact information would be kept for up to six months).
• Once data leaves hospitals (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-covered entities), it may no longer be HIPAA-protected, raising concerns especially considering CPSC’s history of a 2017 to 2019 data breach affecting approximately 30,000 people.
• CPSC bypassed Paperwork Reduction Act notice-and-comment requirements for large-scale data collection.

Lawmakers’ Requests

The September 3 letter calls for CPSC to immediately suspend NEISS-R and request responses by September 18, 2026 to 11 detailed questions (with sub-parts) related to: CPSC’s legal authority for NEISS-R, justification for collecting identifying information, the full list of diagnostic codes involved, the status of the information-blocking legal theory, the retention-period discrepancy, privacy/security safeguards, limits on data reuse/sharing, contractor contracts/security assessments, Paperwork Reduction Act compliance, and a list of hospitals approached/participating.

The September 3 letter was written by Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Kevin Mullin (D-CA); and co-signed by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Nanette Barragán (D-CA), and Kelly Morrison (D-MN).

New Commissioners Join CPSC

With the swearing in of Commissioner Brien Lorenze (R) on September 8 and Commissioner Karen Sessions (R) on August 19, the now three-member Commission restores the quorum at CPSC. Time will tell whether the scope and implementation of NEISS-R may be affected under the newly comprised Commission. Arnold & Porter’s Consumer Product Safety Team will be following this issue closely.

© Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP 2026 All Rights Reserved. This Blog post is intended to be a general summary of the law and does not constitute legal advice. You should consult with counsel to determine applicable legal requirements in a specific fact situation.