Tuesday Tidbits / Reports, Studies, and Guidelines

The Government Accountability Office reports today that

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has made progress in implementing GAO's [information security] recommendations, but further efforts remain. As of September 20, 2018, OPM had implemented 51 (about 64 percent) of the 80 recommendations, but had not provided any evidence, or provided insufficient evidence, to demonstrate implementation of the remaining recommendations.

Nextgov.com points out that

The [OPM] inspector general also noted a “significant deficiency” in OPM’s IT security controls, noting that all the agency’s IT systems had valid security assessments and authorizations but some of those assessments and authorizations included low-quality work and questionable supporting documentation.

A federal appeals court [for the District of Columbia Circuit] is currently considering whether to reinstate a lawsuit brought by two federal employee unions over OPM’s data breach. That suit was scrapped at the federal district court level when a judge ruled the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to sue because they hadn’t suffered any clear harm. [The appellate court heard oral argument in the case on November 2, 2018.]

Chinese government-linked hackers are widely believed responsible for the 2015 OPM breach but U.S. officials have never formally accused the Chinese government of being responsible for the breach. There’s no clear evidence that data stolen in the breach has ever been released on the dark web or used to conduct identity theft.T 

Ten years after enactment of the current federal mental health parity law, Health Affairs considers the state of compliance with that law and how to improve compliance in this article.

Fierce Healthcare discusses a new study on regional health care pricing differences prepared by the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NHRI).

NRHI tracks healthcare costs across six benchmarking areas: Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Maryland, Minnesota and St. Louis, Missouri. In Maryland, for example, costs for patients with private insurance were 20% lower than the national average in 2016, while in Colorado costs were 19% higher than average that year. 

Costs were also below average in St. Louis and Utah, by 6% and 4% respectively and higher by 11% in Minnesota and 4% in Oregon. 

NRHI has been monitoring these cost trends over the past several years and found they’ve remained fairly consistent over the three years of study. * * * NRHI’s team said that having a handle on these trends across different areas makes it clear that the industry can’t find a national, one-size-fits-all solution to the problem.

Interesting.

HHS released the second edition of its Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.

Notable updates:

• The previous guidelines stated that only 10-minute bouts of physical activity counted toward meeting the guidelines. This requirement has been removed because all activity counts.
• There are immediate health benefits, attainable from a single bout of activity, including reduced anxiety and blood pressure, improved quality of sleep, and improved insulin sensitivity.
• There are more long-term benefits from physical activity, including improved brain health, reduced risk of eight types of cancer (previously two), reduced risk for fall-related injuries in older adults, and reduced risk of excessive weight gain.
• Physical activity helps manage more chronic health conditions.
• It can decrease pain for those with osteoarthritis, reduce disease progression for hypertension and type 2 diabetes, reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, and improve cognition for those with dementia, multiple sclerosis, ADHD, and Parkinson’s disease.
• There are new key guidelines for preschool children to be active throughout the day to enhance growth and development.