The OIG’s latest compilation of top HHS management and performance challenges flags vulnerabilities in key HHS health and social services programs, including includes the following:

  1. Ensuring Program Integrity in Medicare (addressing improper payments, fraud, payment policies, health care reforms, and health information technology).
  2. Ensuring Program Integrity in Medicaid (including compliance with fiscal controls, fraud prevention, and quality of Medicaid data).
  3. Curbing the Opioid Epidemic (addressing inappropriate prescribing of opioids, fraud and diversion, access to treatment, and misuse of grant funds).
  4. Improving Care for Vulnerable Populations (addressing substandard nursing home care, hospice care and community-based services problems, and safe services for children).
  5. Ensuring Integrity in Managed Care and Other Programs Delivered through Private Insurers (including combating fraud, waste, and abuse by health care providers; ensuring compliance by managed care and Part D sponsors; and overseeing the health insurance marketplace).
  6. Improving Financial and Administrative Management and Reducing Improper Payments (addressing weaknesses in financial management systems, Medicare trust fund issues, improper payments, contracts management, and Digital Accountability and Transparency Act implementation).
  7. Protecting the Integrity of Public Health and Human Services Grants (ensuring effective Department grants management and grantee program integrity).
  8. Ensuring the Safety of Food, Drugs, and Medical Devices (including overseeing the drug and medical device supply chain).
  9. Ensuring Program Integrity and Quality in Programs Serving American Indian and Alaska Native Populations (improving Indian Health Service quality of care, management, and infrastructure; combating fraud; and ensuring adequate internal controls for grant programs).
  10. Protecting HHS Data, Systems, and Beneficiaries from Cybersecurity Threats (guarding HHS’s data and systems and fostering a culture of cybersecurity beyond HHS).

OIG urges HHS to “be mindful of these challenges and opportunities to address them as it undertakes its efforts to reimagine HHS as part of the Federal Government’s comprehensive plan to reform Government.”