OIG: Medicare Enrollment Database Needs Bolstering

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) needs to improve existing information technology controls to enhance the resiliency of the Medicare program's enrollment system, according to an audit by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG assessed whether CMS implemented sufficient security controls within its Enrollment Database (EDB) to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of Medicare enrollee data, reports Health Data Management . "We found that CMS could improve its risk management oversight, and the current controls in place to ensure the availability of the EDB," said the auditors. "Based on CMS officials' estimates, we calculated the daily financial impact of a nonfunctional EDB to be approximately $47 million."