OIG cites increase in documentation errors
OIG cites increase in documentation errors
The Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports that improper Medicare benefit payments made during FY 2001 totaled $12.1 billion, or about 6.3% of the $191.8 billion in processed fee-for-service payments reported by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The percentage of improper claims due to medically unnecessary services held steady from the year before at 43%. However, the percentage due to documentation errors increased from roughly 36% to 43%, and the percentage due to coding errors crept up from about 15% to 17%.
"Documentation errors represented the largest error category in three of the last six years," reports the OIG. "For FY 2001, the dollar amount of these types of errors increased by almost 20% compared with FY 2000, and they remain a significant problem, accounting for an estimated $5.1 billion in improper payments."
The OIG estimates that the $12 billion in improper payments is almost half the $23.2 billion that it first estimated for FY 1996.
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