Home Health & Hospice Week

If you need a reminder of why you should walk the line and avoid having to enter into Integrity Agreements with the HHS Office of Inspector General, check out a new Government Accountability Office report about the agreements.

IAs and Corporate Integrity Agreements contain "stipulated penalties" with penalty amounts that are "non-negotiable" and do not change across agreements. They range from $1,000 to $50,000 per violation, the GAO report says.

An unnamed hospice provider paid a record-setting $3 million due to such a penalty. It "resulted from the entity's failure to correct improper billing processes and poor claims submission practices that had led to error rates and overpayments ... by Medicare for hospice services," the GAO says. "These issues were uncovered through the claims reviews required under the agreement and HHS-OIG's site visits."

See the report at www.gao.gov/assets/700/691034.pdf.