It is the twenty-second year of the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC) established by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The HCFAC’s annual report for 2018 shows continued focus on preventing and eliminating fraud, waste and abuse from the Medicare and Medicaid programs and increased cooperation between government agencies to facilitate data sharing.
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A recent report from the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller indicates an expansion of the efforts of its Medicaid Fraud Division (MFD) to investigate fraud, waste and abuse in the New Jersey Medicaid Program. The report also highlights MFD’s expanded effort to exclude providers from the Medicaid Program. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), providers and suppliers who bill for services furnished by an excluded or an unlicensed person are considered to have received and overpayment from Medicare which must be reported and returned within 60 days of “identifying” the overpayment (claims-based overpayment). New Jersey Medicaid recently reminded providers that a similar requirement for Medicaid and Medicaid Managed Care providers exists in New Jersey and will be enforced. Healthcare practitioners should be aware of important updates and changes to Medicare and Medicaid Programs of New York and New Jersey. We summarize some of these changes in the article that follows. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has once again proposed new rules which would enhance the screening requirements for providers and suppliers. The rule proposals would ratchet up the scrutiny on provider enrollments and toughen suspension and revocation penalties. Consistently over the years the Office of Inspector General (OIG) has targeted chiropractic services for audits. In fact, chiropractic services appear annually on the OIG’s workplan agenda. In September 2015, the OIG issued a report recommending that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) establish better controls and measures to prevent questionable payments, collect overpayments based on inappropriately paid claims and ensure that claims are paid only for Medicare-covered diagnoses. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently audited New Jersey’s personal care program and found certain deficiencies as a result of noncompliance with Federal and State requirements by some personal care agencies. Based on the audit result, the OIG asked the State to return $32,236,308 in Federal Medicaid reimbursement for personal care services that the OIG claimed did not meet Federal and State requirements. In a welcomed move, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and American Medical Association (AMA) announced elimination of certain sanctions and penalties during ICD-10 transition and the availability of additional resources to help physicians get ready for ICD-10. The mission of the Medicaid Fraud Division (MFD) within the Office of the State Comptroller is to prevent, detect, audit and investigate fraud, waste and abuse by New Jersey providers and recipients. As we look forward to the New Jersey Medicaid Fraud Division 2015 work plan, we look back at the agency’s activities in 2014. Every year the New York State Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG) publishes a work plan that outlines the agency’s focus in the coming year. As in previous years, the targets of agency’s audits and investigations this work plan cycle remain physicians, dentists, laboratories, transportation providers, pharmacies and DMEs, as well as hospitals and home and community health service providers. Below we discuss some of OMIG’s planned integrity activity. Every year, the New Jersey Medicaid Fraud Division (MFD), the watchdog agency for New Jersey’s Medicaid program, releases a workplan which informs providers, suppliers and their advisers about the agency’s focus for the up-coming year. MFD’s 2012 workplan outlines a comprehensive audit and review agenda. We have summarized the agency’s audit criteria to help New Jersey Medicaid providers become aware of and stay prepared for scrutiny in 2012. On July 26, 2012, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder announced an unprecedented partnership between private and public healthcare insurance organizations focused on fighting healthcare fraud. In the workplan released earlier in the week, the New York State Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG), which is an independent agency within the Department of Health, renewed its commitment to fighting fraud, waste and abuse in the New York Medicaid Program. One of the nine business lines that the agency will focus The New Jersey Medicaid and New Jersey FamilyCare programs insures more than one million New Jersey residents. Review responsibilities of the different units within the Medicaid Fraud Division, the State’s “watchdog” agency over these programs. The Medicare and Medicaid programs provide health insurance for tens of millions of people. According to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Medicare program alone has 47.5 million beneficiaries and, in 2010, had total expenditures of $523 billion. It is not surprising, therefore, that such large programs invite scrutiny from government auditors and If a New York doctor accepts Medicaid and practices in New York that may be enough be included an audit program conducted through a project known as Payment Error Rate Measurement Program (PERM). When a provider participates in the New York State Medicaid Program, a provider agrees to accept payment as payment in full for the provided services. The same applies to providers who accept Medicaid Managed Care or Family Health Plus (FHPlus) plans. Many providers were disappointed to learn that on September 23, 2011, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that was previously passed without opposition by both houses of the New York State legislature (A.5686-A Gottfried and S.2184-A Little). According to the press release of one of the bill’s sponsors, “[t]he bill would set forth In the last few years, many healthcare providers have come under increased scrutiny from federal and state investigative and auditing agencies. The recent USAToday article confirms that the federal government stepped up the prosecution of health care fraud. In fact, according to USAToday “[n]ew government statistics show federal health care fraud prosecutions in the first A bill introduced in the New York Senate on February 10, 2011, and which passed both of the New York’s State legislative houses in June (A.5686-A Gottfried and S.2184-A Little), is awaiting Gov. Cuomo’s approval. The bill will impact the power of the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG) and will address some of |
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