HHS’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) could lose 400 staff members charged with fighting fraud and abuse, and that could mean changes to projects in the OIG’s Work Plan – including to an investigation of electronic health record (EHR) documentation practices.
 
At the OIG’s peak in 2012, the Office of Investigations had 1,800 employees, said Gary Cantrell, deputy inspector general for the OIG’s Office of Investigations, during a June 24 Senate committee hearing, as reported by the Center for Public Integrity.
 
But budget cuts and an already stretched-thin staff mean not only scaling back projects but potentially missing fraud cases. About 1,200 complaints in 2012 weren’t investigated because of “lack of resources,” the story says.
 
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs called the cuts a “penny-wise, pound-foolish approach.”
 
Because of the cuts, OIG is reviewing “dozens of projects and audits” in the 2013 Work Plan, including one to look for inappropriate payments for E/M services. “Medicare contractors have noted an increased frequency of medical records with identical documentation across services,” OIG states. Those are commonly called cloned notes.
 
Part B News readers know about the dangers of cloned notes and other EHR documentation problems and get solid, proven guidance to avoid them.