Improper Medicare payments and fraud populated the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) list of the top 25 unimplemented recommendations, according to a report from the watchdog agency that offered insight into where the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) still needs to take action to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.
The OIG cited previously identified problems with inappropriate Medicare payments to home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities (SNF) and ineligible beneficiaries that CMS has not addressed. New regulations under the Affordable Care Act require physicians to document face-to-face encounters with home health patients; however, 32 percent of claims in 2011 and 2012 did not meet those requirements, resulting in $2 billion in potential overpayments. CMS stated it is implementing a plan for oversight through a Supplemental Medical Review Contractor.
Previously, the OIG and others raised concerns about medically necessary therapy services tied to resource utilization group (RUG) scores. In 2009, one fourth of SNF therapy claims were misreported, leading to $1.5 billion in inappropriate payments from Medicare. CMS is in the second phase of a project that aims to identify alternate payment methods for therapy services.
Medicare payments made to incarcerated individuals have been problematic as well. From 2009 to 2011, more than $33 million in payments were made to nearly 12,000 incarcerated beneficiaries, all of which CMS was unable to recoup. Last year, meanwhile, OIG said that Medicare Part D overpaid nearly $12 million in drug costs to incarcerated individuals. Although CMS has agreed to find ways to improve the timeliness with which it receives incarceration information, it did not agree with OIG’s recommendation to work with Medicare contractors to ensure exemption codes are processed correctly.
via OIG: CMS not doing enough to fight fraud, waste and abuse – FierceHealthPayerAntiFraud.