Summary
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)--the agency that administers Medicare--estimated that the program made about $700 million in improper payments for durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies (DMEPOS) from April 1, 2005, through March 31, 2006. To protect Medicare from improper DMEPOS payments, CMS relies on three Program Safeguard Contractors (PSC), and four contractors that process Medicare claims, to conduct critical program integrity activities. GAO was requested to examine CMS's and CMS's contractors' activities to prevent and minimize improper payments for DMEPOS, and describe CMS's oversight of PSC program integrity activities. To do this, GAO analyzed DMEPOS claims data by supplier and item to identify atypical, or large, increases in billing; reviewed CMS documents; and conducted interviews with CMS and contractor officials. GAO focused its work on contractors' automated prepayment controls and described related claims analysis functions.
To prevent and minimize improper DMEPOS payments, CMS's contractors conduct program integrity activities, which include performing medical reviews of certain claims before they are paid to determine whether the items meet criteria for Medicare coverage. As part of their efforts, CMS's contractors responsible for medical review use automated prepayment controls to deny claims that should not be paid or identify claims that should be reviewed. However, GAO found three shortfalls in these automated prepayment controls that make the Medicare program vulnerable to improper payments. (1) Contractors responsible for medical review did not have automated prepayment controls in place to identify questionable claims that are part of an atypically rapid increase in billing. (2) In some instances, these contractors did not have automated prepayment controls in place to identify claims for items unlikely to be prescribed in the course of routine quality medical care. CMS has recently begun an initiative to add controls of this kind for some DMEPOS items. (3) CMS does not require these contractors to share information on the most effective automated prepayment controls of the other contractors or consider adopting them. For example, Medicare might have saved almost $71 million in less than 2 years if one effective automated prepayment control designed to prevent Medicare from paying for more than one home-use hospital bed per month for a beneficiary, which was used by one of these contractors, had been used by the others. CMS oversees the PSCs' program integrity activities by providing written manuals and contracts to guide their work. As part of its oversight, CMS is implementing an annual contractor performance evaluation process, based on three evaluation tools, to assess each PSC's performance. CMS officials said that the agency will use the results of these evaluations to determine two things: whether to renew a PSC's contract, and whether a PSC may earn award fees--a monetary reward for good performance--in addition to the regular payments it receives under its contract.
Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change
from "In process" to "Implemented" or "Not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director:
Team:
Phone:
Leslie G. Aronovitz
Government Accountability Office: Health Care
(312) 220-7767
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: The Administrator of CMS should require the PSCs to develop thresholds for unexplained increases in billing--and use them to develop automated prepayment controls as one component of their manual medical review strategies.
Agency Affected: Department of Health and Human Services: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Status: In process
Comments: In its comments on the report, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) agreed with this recommendation and indicated that it would build upon existing Program Safeguard Contractors' (PSC) processes for identifying billing increases and would work to improve contractors' automated prepayment controls. In particular, it will incorporate these approaches into its development of Medically Unlikely Edits (MUE) and the PSCs' current processes for identifying spike billings. CMS officials also indicated that they would consider ways to improve the contractors' automated pre-payment controls to further enhance and prioritize the contractors' medical review efforts
Recommendation: The Administrator of CMS should require the Durable Medical Equipment Medicare Administrative Contractors, Durable Medical Equipment Regional Carrier, and PSCs to exchange information on their automated prepayment controls, and have each of these contractors consider whether the automated prepayment controls developed by the others could reduce their incidence of improper payments.
Agency Affected: Department of Health and Human Services: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Status: In process
Comments: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) agreed with this recommendation in its comments on the report and responded that the contractors' Joint Operating Agreements (JOA)provide a means through which information could be shared. CMS currently requires these contractors to have Joint Operating Agreements attached to each of their contracts to outline specifically the contact people and coordination points for sharing information across contractors. CMS officials indicated that they believe that contractors currently coordinate their edit processes but would review the contractors' JOAs to ensure that this requirement is clear and that it is being adequately followed.
