{"id":14668,"date":"2026-07-22T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=14668"},"modified":"2026-07-22T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T09:00:00","slug":"trumps-personnel-agency-says-it-will-remove-some-identifying-info-as-it-sweeps-up-medical-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=14668","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Personnel Agency Says It Will Remove Some Identifying Info as It Sweeps Up Medical Records"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration is forging ahead<\/a> with a controversial plan to collect the medical records of millions of federal workers and retirees, as well as their family members.<\/p>\n

The Office of Personnel Management said in a notice<\/a> posted last month that it will begin routinely collecting identifiable, personal health information on more than 8 million people \u2014 despite concerns from privacy advocates and Democrats, who have demanded the agency drop the plan. The notice will go into effect July 24, allowing OPM to begin its collection at any point afterward.<\/p>\n

In reaction to privacy concerns raised by insurers and others, OPM now says the identities of enrollees will be \u201cpseudonymized\u201d \u2014 meaning names, addresses, and Social Security numbers will be removed \u2014 before the agency\u2019s analysts review the massive new health datasets it will soon begin receiving.<\/p>\n

Birth years of enrollees will be retained, and the agency\u2019s \u201ctechnical staff\u201d will receive member IDs that it will scramble into different, unique numbers before releasing them to other staffers, according to the notice.<\/p>\n

But the notice also specifies that OPM retains the right to reidentify the records.<\/p>\n

Sixty-five insurance companies will be required to routinely send OPM detailed data \u2014 including names, addresses, doctor information, diagnoses, prescriptions filled, and payment details \u2014 on health care services paid through the Federal Employees Health Benefits and Postal Service Health Benefits programs.<\/p>\n

In a change to its original proposal, first reported by KFF Health News, the agency says it also wants to peek at records kept by Medicare, the federally funded health insurance for older and disabled Americans, to examine claims from federal employees and retirees, and their families, who depend on both programs.<\/p>\n

In its latest notice, OPM argues that the vast trove of data is necessary to ferret out fraud and overpayments in the FEHB and PSHB programs. Those programs cost roughly $80 billion a year<\/a>, with about $50 billion covered by the federal government and $30 billion funded by enrollees. The Trump administration has ramped up efforts, led by Vice President JD Vance, to curtail what it says is rampant fraud and misuse of publicly funded health benefits.<\/p>\n

The effort still faces criticism that it doesn\u2019t go far enough to protect the privacy of federal workers and their families.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly, this administration has not earned our trust with Americans\u2019 sensitive data,\u201d Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in an emailed statement to KFF Health News. \u201cIf OPM wants to work in good faith to reduce fraud, they should come to Congress, including to folks like me who are engaged on this issue and represent many federal workers and retirees and their families, and work to build consensus and trust before implementing these sweeping changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The original notice<\/a>, posted in December, sparked concerns in part because it did not specify what the Trump administration planned to do with the sensitive health information it receives \u2014 and did not instruct insurers to redact identifying information.<\/p>\n

OPM General Counsel Kurt Dykstra said the detailed records are critical to the administration\u2019s mission of rooting out fraud and could help identify fraud perpetrated not only by medical providers but also by enrollees.<\/p>\n

But when pressed for instances of workers, retirees, or their relatives committing such fraud, Dykstra only noted generally that healthcare fraud does occur.<\/p>\n

The information could demonstrate \u201cpotential anomalies in usage patterns that could be related to the individual, but really also could be related to the provider, the treater, the clinic \u2014 whoever it is that\u2019s actually providing the care,\u201d Dykstra told KFF Health News in an interview.<\/p>\n

Records deemed suspicious by OPM\u2019s data analysts could then be referred to the agency\u2019s Office of the Inspector General for further investigation, which could include \u201cdetermining who\u2019s involved and what the potential issues are, what the ramifications look like,\u201d Dykstra said.<\/p>\n

OPM\u2019s plan to collect and analyze medical records has prompted unease among unions and federal workers, who have been subjected<\/a> to mass firings and layoffs \u2014 in some cases, they say, driven by political retribution \u2014 since President Donald Trump took office.<\/p>\n

Health privacy lawyers say, too, that while pseudonymizing workers\u2019 details is a step in the right direction, it might not go far enough to protect their privacy.<\/p>\n

OPM\u2019s notice mostly complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal law commonly called HIPAA that protects sensitive health data from being shared, said Matt Fisher, a health privacy lawyer. But he noted one exception: The member ID that insurers provide enrollees can be used to identify them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe described process arguably comes down to trusting internal controls in OPM to ensure that data is walled off as proposed,\u201d Fisher said in an email. \u201cThe ideal would be for only truly de-identified information to be shared in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Insurers regularly share information about claims with employers who offer health plans to employees, in efforts to control costs. But since employers themselves are not covered by HIPAA, large datasets are typically de-identified, meaning the insurers remove identifying information such as employees\u2019 names or addresses, to comply with the law.<\/p>\n

Employers, too, have been accused of using health information to target employees for dismissals. Most recently, a group of Meta employees filed a lawsuit accusing the tech giant<\/a> of using artificial intelligence to target for layoffs those who had taken medical or family leave.<\/p>\n

Pseudonymizing details such as names or addresses would go only so far to protect privacy, since medical conditions in particular can make it very easy to identify certain employees, said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, a technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for data privacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe richer the data, the more likely it is going to be identifying,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this case, you may be the only person in a region that has that particular kind of medical procedure, condition, or even prescription,\u201d he said. \u201cAll of those things can be extremely identifying, even when you remove or obfuscate or pseudonymize direct identifiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most federal retirees decide to continue with FEHB plans and enroll in Medicare once they turn 65, which provides more comprehensive coverage and allows family members to remain enrolled in FEHB plans, said John Hatton, the staff vice president for policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.<\/p>\n

OPM wants to analyze medical records for those dual enrollees as well. The agency is asking for all of their cost and service use records from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.<\/p>\n

Still, Hatton said, OPM\u2019s latest notice provides more details about how the agency says it will use the sensitive health information it receives and safeguard it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big improvement over the last notice, which was very lacking in detail and explanation for why they wanted all the medical claims data and how they\u2019re going to protect the privacy of the data,\u201d Hatton said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d be open to seeing even more security around the privacy of the data so there really is a clear wall,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/insurance\/trump-opm-federal-workers-medical-records-data-privacy-pseudonymize\/”>article<\/a&gt<\/a>; first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org”>KFF<\/a> Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative<\/a> Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2023\/04\/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot<\/a>; style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n

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The Trump administration is forging ahead with a controversial plan to collect the medical records of millions of federal workers and retirees, as well as their family members. The Office of Personnel Management said in a notice posted last month that it will begin routinely collecting identifiable, personal health information on more than 8 million…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}