The Washington Post reported today that...
"Medicare contractors are paid tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to detect fraudulent Medicare claims are using inaccurate and inconsistent data..."
The Washington Post is reporting on an
unreleased report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG)...
"The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services inspector general’s report — obtained by The Associated Press before its official release — found repeated problems among the fraud contractors over a decade and systemic failures by federal health officials to adequately supervise them."
The Recovery Audit Contractors (RAC) auditors were implemented in 2007 in Florida, California and Texas to solve these problems.
"CMS has repeatedly said the latest system of fraud contractors was designed to fix the problems with earlier contractors and allow the agency to better monitor them."
These RAC auditors are currently auditing physical therapists, physicians and hospitals.
"The same issues were identified 10 years ago by inspector general investigators, and dozens of reports in the past decade also have found problems.
In 2001, acting Inspector General Michael Mangano testified that the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services (CMS) wasn’t doing a good job of holding contractors accountable."
I hope someone is auditing the auditors.
