The Office of Personnel Management’s plan to collect claims-level health information about federal workers and their family members and store it for 30 years could open feds up to a potential security breach, Senate Democrats said.
enate Democrats again urged the Trump administration Wednesday to abandon its plans to collect detailed health information from federal workers, retirees and their families, saying recent tweaks to “de-identify” records are insufficient to protect employees’ privacy.
Last December, the Office of Personnel Management published an information collection request in the Federal Register that would require insurers who participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits and Postal Service Health Benefits programs to provide monthly reports with identifiable health data on their enrollees.
Following pushback from federal employee groups and medical ethicists, OPM in June revised its proposal, purporting to take steps to mask employees and retirees’ identities in the data collection. But organizations that represent federal workers and retirees warned that the agency still hadn’t done enough to protect patients’ privacy.
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