"The report found that in fiscal year 2006, CMS failed to detect that more than one-third of spending on DME was fraudulent."More than one blog picked up the story from the New York Times today based on a draft report obtained by the Times.
The full report should be out this week or next.
Medicare fraud was under reported by CMs when they claimed the false claims error rate for DME was 7.5% for 2006 when actually, according to the OIG, the true error rate was 31.5%.
“This is outrageous,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, who has repeatedly credited the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with reducing improper expenditures. “If heads don’t roll, you can’t change the culture of this organization,” he added." (source - NYT)
Honest, hardworking physical therapists may now have to put up with increasingly burdensome audit and regulatory measures.
