Fall must be here because the FY 2013 OIG Work Plan is out. Providers of all shapes and sizes should at least browse the table of contents to see whether any of the OIG’s topics for FY 2013 touch important aspects of their businesses and practices. Among the many topics, some highlights include:
- Analyze the “savings” of expanding the hospital three day payment window to 14 days;
- Review Medicare payments for hospital discharges that should have been billed as transfers;
- Review payment for canceled hospital surgical procedures;
- Review effect on costs of hospital acquisition of ASCs;
- Review payments for outpatient physical therapy services provided by independent therapists;
- Review appropriateness of payments for sleep study services and the high utilization of sleep testing procedures;
- Review coding of anesthesia services (personally performed versus medical direction of up to four concurrent procedures);
- Review the payment for practice expenses of imaging services;
- Review the medical necessity of high cost diagnostic imaging tests;
- Review physician billing for “incident-to” services; and
- Review physician coding of place of service.
Also of note, OIG states that it expects to publish a revised Provider Self-Disclosure Protocol some time in FY 2013.
If you have questions about any of these topics or the OIG Work Plan in general please contact Don Black.
