Friday, April 01, 2016

TGIF

For the past day and a half, the FEHBlog has been attending the OPM AHIP FEHBP carrier conference in Crystal City, VA.  OPM has posted the acting Director's keynote speech. Govexec.com and Federal News Radio have reported on that address.  The FEHBlog's head is spinning from all of the data and new acronyms that he acquired. Expect more reflections on the conference in the weekend update.

The conference included an informative panel on cybersecurity.  The talk caused the FEHBlog to check up with the Ponemon Institute which recently published a report on the cyberthreats faced by healthcare organizations. The Hill reported today in a bit of good news that "The {Department of Homeland Security told Congress] that 29 [federal' agencies have reported 321 incidents of ransomware-related activity since last June. But in no case did the agencies have to pay up, as the ransomware was not able to successfully infect the government's networks." Evidently a sensible way to protect against ransomware is to back up your data in a way that is protected from the primary server.  

As the Toledo Blade reports, today is the day that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services roll out its mandatory bundled payment program for hospitals in 87 cities across the country. The Blade story explains how hospitals are reacting to the initiative. AHIP Coverage discusses a commercial payer's bundled payment initiative here.


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