The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released its latest update to its “High-Risk Series” reports, which again lists Medicare as a high-risk program, in part because of the program’s substantial size and scope, and its wide-ranging effects on beneficiaries, the health care industry, and the U.S. economy. The latest report highlights five areas of particular concern to the GAO:
- Payments and provider incentives in original Medicare (specifically referencing physician feedback reports, physician self-referral policy, high-expenditure Part B drugs, end stage renal disease (ESRD) bundled payments, and low-volume payment adjustments for dialysis facilities);
- Medicare Advantage (MA) and other Medicare health plans (including concerns about MA plan payment adjustments and excess payments to Special Needs Plans);
- Program design effects on beneficiaries (addressing coordination for dual-eligible beneficiaries, dual-eligible special needs plans, and access to preventive services);
- Program management (including implementation of durable medical equipment competitive bidding and oversight of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contracts); and
- Oversight of patient care and safety (including the use of clinical data registries and oversight of vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries in nursing homes and long-term care hospitals (LTCHs)).
The GAO makes a series of recommendations to Congress and CMS to address program risks. Specifically, GAO recommends that Congress consider directing the HHS Secretary to require providers who self-refer intensity-modulated radiation therapy services to disclose to their patients that they have a financial interest in the service. The GAO also recommends that Congress better align Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing requirements with U.S. Preventive Task Force recommendations.
Specific recommendations for CMS include:
- Disseminating physician performance feedback reports more frequently;
- Improving the timeliness and efficacy of CMS’s monitoring of the accuracy of ESRD low volume payment adjustments;
- Improving the accuracy of the adjustment made for differences in diagnostic coding practices between MA and Medicare fee-for service (FFS) programs;
- Establishing specific plans for using MA encounter data to risk adjust payments or for other purposes;
- Evaluating the extent to which dual-eligible special needs plans have provided appropriate care to the population they serve; and
- Expanding validation surveys at LTCHs to assess accreditation organization identification of deficiencies.
In addition, the GAO lists the following recommendations for CMS to exercise Affordable Care Act authorities to reduce the risk of improper Medicare payments:
- Require a surety bond for certain types of at-risk providers and suppliers;
- Publish a proposed rule for increased disclosures of prior actions taken against providers and suppliers enrolling or revalidating enrollment in Medicare, such as whether the provider or supplier has been subject to a payment suspension from a federal health care program;
- Establish core elements of compliance programs for providers and suppliers;
- Improve automated edits that identify services billed in medically unlikely amounts;
- Develop performance measures for the Zone Program Integrity Contractors who explicitly link their work to the agency’s Medicare FFS program integrity performance measures and improper payment reduction goals;
- Reduce differences between contractor postpayment review requirements when possible;
- Monitor the database used to track Recovery Auditor activities to ensure that all postpayment review contractors are submitting required data and that the data the database contains are accurate and complete;
- Require Medicare administrative contractors to share information about the underlying policies and savings related to their most effective edits; and
- Efficiently identify and implement an information technology solution that addresses the removal of Social Security numbers from Medicare beneficiaries’ health insurance cards.