The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) this week announced plans to modernize the system for tracking injuries related to incidents involving consumer products, including home furnishings.
The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), designed in 1972, is the nation’s principal system for tracking consumer product-related injuries. It relies on manual review and coding of medical records from roughly 70 of the nation’s more than 5,000 hospital emergency departments.
The number of participating hospitals was dropped from 100 to 70 across 36 states in April 2025 following Trump Administration cuts that impacted the system.
In a statement released July 22, CPSC said the updates to NEISS would become fully effective by the beginning of 2027 and would include a return to collecting data from 100 hospitals. However, the new, standardized electronic data exchange will be expanded across all 50 states, adding hospitals in Alaska, Hawaii, the Mountain West and northern states previously underrepresented or not represented at all.
“This more geographically balanced sample will strengthen the commission’s ability to detect product hazards unique to particular regions and improve the statistical reliability of the nation’s injury data,” the CPSC statement said.
Starting next year, the updated system – NEISS-Remodel, or NEISS-R – will automatically pull from patients’ electronic health records to flag issues with consumer product safety in near real-time. CPSC says the system will be supported by “contractual privacy requirements and standardized security safeguards.”
“Earlier detection will mean earlier warnings, recalls and protective action – reducing product-related injuries before they multiply,” according to the CPSC’s statement.
The American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA) applauded the CPSC’s announcement this week but also noted that further improvements to NEISS data gathering are necessary for home furnishings products.
“When injuries involving furniture occur, it is important for CPSC and the industry to know whether the product involved complied with any applicable voluntary or mandatory safety standards,” notes AHFA Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Bill Perdue. “Either way, warnings or recalls may be necessary. But the recall of a non-compliant product signals a gap in enforcement, while the recall of a compliant product signals a possible gap in the safety standard itself.”
Since products involved in a tip-over incident are likely too damaged for testing, AHFA has advocated for a mandatory manufacturer label on all products that includes the manufacturer name, date of manufacture and, in the case of clothing storage units, the designation of “F2057-23” to indicate compliance. The combination of these three data points can help CPSC officials determine whether a product is compliant with applicable safety standards, even if they are unable to test it.
“AHFA has been discussing this proposed manufacturer label with CPSC officials for years. A manufacturer label for clothing storage units is under consideration now at ASTM International and has strong consensus among all members of the Furniture Safety Subcommittee – CPSC staff, parent groups and industry,” said Perdue.
“Although it is still a work in progress, we hope it will be voted on this year. Then we can work with CPSC staff to make sure this information is included in the new data collection system.”