Home Health & Hospice Week

Medicare payment error report gives feds ammunition to tighten oversight. A new way to count Medicare payment errors will likely mean a whole new round of fraud and abuse crackdowns for you. Under the Obama Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has "significantly revised and improved its calculations of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) error rates in 2009," CMS says in a release. As a result, the error rate leapt from 3.6 percent last year to 7.8 percent this year. "The Obama Administration is committed to strengthening and improving the Medicare and Medicaid systems and doing everything we can to be responsible and vigilant stewards of these programs that millions of Americans rely upon," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says in a release. The error calculation change will help with the administration's "mandate to root out errors and fraud," Sebelius adds. Oxygen First Casualty The change includes "a requirement that medical [...]