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New this year is quality reporting data…The Office of Inspector General in the Department of Health and Human Services is charged with overseeing the agency's programs to make sure they function efficiently and safely…OIG recently released its work plan for 2016…Here, among the vast responsibilities assigned to the office are five items OIG will check to ensure hospitals provide quality care and maintain safety:

1. CMS validation of hospital-submitted quality reporting data
2. Hospitals' contingency plans for protecting data in the EHR
3. Hospital preparedness and response to high-risk infectious diseases
4. Long-term-care hospitals – adverse events in post-acute care for Medicare beneficiaries
5. Inpatient rehabilitation facilities – adverse events for Medicare beneficiaries

Walgreens is providing up to $15 million worth of free flu shot vouchers through its collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, in an effort to improve immunization rates among uninsured and underinsured…the voucher initiative has been instrumental in helping to protect more people from the flu each season,… providing access to flu shots at no cost for those who are eligible, we can make a significant impact by protecting more people throughout the flu season…

Department of Health and Human Services has no plans to curtail use of enterprise social network Yammer, despite a scathing report detailing serious security risks associated with that platform at the Department of Veterans Affairs…VA’s Office of Inspector General issued a report calling Microsoft-owned Yammer "unapproved," … we found that it had vulnerable security features, recurring website malfunctions, and users engaged in a misuse of time and resources,"..

"Without aggressive effort in the time remaining ... lack of readiness may lead to disruption in claims processing."…counting down toward Oct. 1, 2015, the Workgroup for Data Interchange… concern remains… sent a letter to Health and Human Services making four recommendations...

1. HHS should expeditiously provide full transparency regarding the readiness of individual Medicaid agencies by state.
2. The recently-announced Ombudsman position should be appointed as soon as possible, and WEDI strongly urges CMS to not wait until the compliance deadline to complete this appointment.
3. The go-live ICD-10 support plan should include leveraging WEDI's and CMS' implementation support program, which already serves as the central source for collecting ICD-10 (International Classification of Disease) industry issues and solutions.
4. Additional outreach is needed in order to help providers with complying with most recent local coverage determination codes.

In the wake of an inspection that found "multi-systemwide failures" that created a major risk of patient harm, Seattle's Western State Hospital may lose millions in Medicare and Medicaid funding…Department of Health and Human Services will end its relationship with Washington's largest psychiatric hospital on November 28, costing the 842-bed facility a total of more than $15 million a year in federal funds. State officials said the hospital is working to correct the problems that inspectors discovered before the deadline…"Patient and staff safety remain priorities and to that end we are working to recruit more staff, which is key to improving safety and providing quality services to the patients at all of our state psychiatric hospitals," said Kathy Spears, a spokesperson for the state Department of Social and Health Services. "We have not lost federal funding..."

Department of Health and Human Services said …signed a deal with British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc to develop antibiotics... will share costs…to develop a portfolio of drugs to treat illnesses caused by bioterrorism agents and antibiotic-resistant infections… Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority .. will initially provide $50 million,… The first drug candidate to be explored is a combination of two antibiotics, Aztreonam and Avibactam

Most federal insurance cooperatives created under the Affordable Care Act are losing money and could have difficulty repaying millions of dollars in federal loans, an internal government audit has found,…the inspector general… said that most of the insurance co-ops enrolled fewer people than they had predicted, and that 22 of the 23 co-ops lost money last year.

Ensuring patients have access to needed medicines is critical, but importing medicines, whether from Canada or elsewhere in the world, is the wrong answer…Due to the Food and Drug Administration’s comprehensive drug approval process, medicines on the U.S. market are widely regarded as the safest in the world. The U.S.’s relatively closed distribution system plays a critical role in helping to keep the global proliferation of counterfeit medicines from infiltrating the U.S. prescription medicine system…Importation is often viewed as a means to lower drug costs, but these proposals ignore key facts about how importation impacts patient safety and access to new, innovative treatments. Consider the following four facts:

1. To date, not a single Secretary of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services has been able to certify that importation will both 1) pose no additional risk to public health and safety, and 2) generate cost-savings that are passed on to American consumers.
2. Foreign governments will not ensure that prescription drugs entering the U.S. from abroad are safe and effective.
3. There is no guarantee any potential savings generated from the importation of medicines will be passed on to the patient.
4. Counterfeiters are becoming increasingly sophisticated with their technology and pose a significant health and safety risk to patients.

..Department of Health and Human Services is making it easier for patients with shoulder injury related to vaccine administration to be compensated for their pain….In order to capture the broader array of potential injuries,… the Secretary (Sylvia Mathews Burwell) proposes to add SIRVA for all tetanus toxoid-containing vaccines that are administered intramuscularly through percutaneous injection into the upper arm.. more individuals receiving immunizations may be contributing to…rise in patient claims. SIRVA is the first condition compensated by the government that relates to vaccine technique instead of the substance within the vaccine…

Department of Health and Human Services will fund 266 new primary care community health center sites in high-need areas nationwide to the tune of $169 million.. new sites, infused with Affordable Care Act funds, will increase care access for more than 1.2 million patients, according to HHS, building on $101 million the department gave to the program in May...