Update... I asked around the office and learned more about this. TL;DR: I'm less right than I thought. Specifically regarding tracking cause of death: Not e

Update... I asked around the office and learned more about this. TL;DR: I'm less right than I thought. Specifically regarding tracking cause of death: Not every disease or condition is "reportable". Each state maintains a list of reportable diseases. When a hospital/lab (hereafter: facility) encounters a disease on the list, then they are required to report it. State health departments will open investigations in various circumstances. You've seen events like e. coli outbreaks in the news--those always precipitate an investigation. There are also investigations associated with individual infections, i.e. every case of tuberculosis. If a patient involved in an investigation dies, public health will find out. But, if a patient dies from (because of) an infection that wasn't on the reportable list, then public health won't know the cause of death unless it is on the death certificate. Just like the article says! Regarding tracking the susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotics (superbugs): Any sample that is tested for antibiotic susceptibility is reportable. The results of that testing generally include the specimen source, but don't include why the test was ordered (i.e. because some person has sepsis and might die) and certainly there's no (deliberate) relation between this data and cause of death.