(April 8, 2014)—Today, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General released its report on the bidding program’s Round 1 Rebid. The report is based on a random sampling of winning suppliers and single payment amounts (SPAs).
Although OIG determined that CMS generally selected DME suppliers correctly, the report notes that the agency did make some mistakes. CMS “selected winning suppliers that did not meet program requirements because it did not always consistently follow established program procedures and Federal requirements.”
OIG believes that the effects of these mistakes were immaterial to supplier payments based on their calculation that suppliers were only paid $33,704 less than they would have received without any errors. However, including bids from the suppliers that did not meet program requirements affected 19 percent of SPAs reviewed for the report, and only 100 out of a possible 3,011 SPAs were reviewed.
The report recommends two actions for CMS, both of which the agency concurred with:
1. Follow established program procedures and applicable Federal requirements consistently in evaluating the financial documents of all suppliers.
2. Ensure that all bids of winning suppliers are included in the calculation of SPAs before offering contracts.
Click here to read the full text of the report. AAHomecare will review the report in detail and provide additional information.
