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Washington, D.C.—Responding in large part to concerns raised by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), the government has revised significantly a proposed health claims data bank to provide far greater protection against disclosure of personal and medical information about those covered under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).

“I am pleased the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been responsive to NTEU’s expressed concerns, and that it has taken meaningful steps toward protecting the security of personal information about FEHBP enrollees,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley.

When OPM last November proposed to create what it called a new ‘system of records’ that would include personal information about those in the FEHBP, as well as enrollees in two new insurance programs covering private sector workers, President Kelley objected strongly to the lack of adequate protections against disclosure of personal identifying information about enrollees.

OPM said it needed access to FEHBP health records, as well as maintenance of those records in a database, to permit it to fulfill its obligation under the law to ensure that the program provided the best value for enrollees and taxpayers.

In the wake of NTEU’s concerns, however, OPM postponed implementation of a new system in order to study it further. As a result, the agency said that only ‘de-identified’ data—or information without individual identifying elements—would be released outside of OPM. Further, OPM said, its own analysts using the data will be provided only with the ‘de-identified’ information.

President Kelley noted other important enrollee protections, as well, including security measures to protect against inadvertent disclosure; limits, compared to the initial proposal, on the scope of information to be collected—for example, enrollee telephone numbers will not be included; and a significant narrowing of the so-called ‘routine uses’ for the data. This latter change would further limit the circumstances under which the information can be disclosed.

One other important change, the NTEU leader said, involves OPM’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which has long used this kind of information in audit and investigative efforts to detect and pursue fraud within FEHBP.

Under the new proposal, OPM would receive the information from the OIG only after that office—which gets the records from health care providers and administrators—runs the data through what it calls ‘technical protocols’ designed to be secure. That is when OPM’s analysts will be provided with the information they need for their work.

“Taken together,” Kelley said, “these changes are a substantive improvement in the earlier proposal, in that the information can still be put to effective use while the need to recognize and respect employee privacy rights is being addressed.”

As the nation’s largest independent federal union, NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.