A recent HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) report asserts that Medicare inappropriately paid $5 million for home health claims in 2010 with the following three errors: overlapping with claims for inpatient hospital stay; overlapping with claims for skilled nursing facility (SNF) stays; or billing for services on dates after the beneficiary’s death. The OIG also estimates that 25% of HHAs exceeded the OIG’s threshold indicating unusually-high billing for at least one of six measures of questionable billing (e.g., high average outlier payment amount per beneficiary; high average number of visits per beneficiary; high percentage of beneficiaries for whom other HHAs billed Medicare; high average number of late episodes per beneficiary; high average number of therapy visits per beneficiary; and high average Medicare payment amount per beneficiary). The OIG points out that while these six measures indicate potential fraud, there may be legitimate reasons for an HHA to exceed the OIG’s thresholds on the measures. The OIG also found that 80% of the HHAs with questionable billing were located in one of four states: TX, FL, CA, or MI. In response to these findings, the OIG recommends that CMS: (1) improve the use of claims processing edits to prevent inappropriate payments for identified errors; (2) Increase monitoring of billing for home health services; (3) enforce and consider lowering the 10% annual cap on an HHA’s total outlier payments; (4) consider imposing a temporary moratorium on new HHA enrollments in Florida and Texas, and (5) take appropriate action regarding identified inappropriate payments. While CMS concurred with the recommendations, the agency disagreed with the OIG’s estimate of the inappropriate payments for home health claims overlapping with inpatient hospital and SNF stays.