Federal Reports

The Postal Service is among the top postal operators in digital services that enhance the core letter and parcel business, but it lags behind in terms of revenue-generating pure digital services. Despite legal constraints prohibiting the provision of non-postal services, the Postal Service should fortify its digital strategy. The future postal digital strategy would be based on four building blocks: increasing the use of data to optimize operations and build a more data-rich environment for customers; speeding up the digitization of its "physical" products; rejuvenating its limited portfolio of purely digital services, and accelerating digital transformation.

FDA approves new drugs for sale in the United States through the new drug application (NDA) review process. FDA requires all new drugs to undergo clinical testing to demonstrate their safety and efficacy prior to approval. However, premarket clinical trials may not always identify or fully characterize risks. Postmarketing research can provide additional information about the risks, benefits, and optimal use of an approved drug. In 2006, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that FDA could not readily identify whether or how timely postmarketing studies were progressing toward completion, and that FDA lacked an effective monitoring system for postmarketing studies. Since then, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) expanded FDA's authority to require postmarketing studies and to take enforcement action when sponsors are out of compliance. This study follows up on OIG's previous work in light of FDA's expanded authority.

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The Federal Maritime Commission OIG reviewed the system of quality control for the audit organization of the EAC OIG in effect for the year ended March 31, 2015. This report discusses their findings.

This report is part of a series on adverse events in health care settings, defined as harm resulting from medical care. Previous OIG work identified harm rates of about 30 percent in both acute-care hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (SNF), with an attendant toll on patient health and taxpayers' costs, the latter amounting to billions of dollars annually. This report extends our work by evaluating care provided in rehabilitation (rehab) hospitals. Rehab hospitals are post-acute providers that specialize in intensive rehabilitative care for patients recovering from illness, injury, or surgery. While in recent years stakeholders have paid considerable attention to patient safety in acute-care hospitals and increasingly in SNFs, less is known about adverse events in other health care settings. An increased understanding of adverse events that occur in this unique setting would better equip health care providers and other stakeholders in taking actions to improve the safety of patient care in rehab hospitals.