Talking Points Of Hhs 2010 Oig Work Plan

By Author: Jaun Paul
Total Articles: 53
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The HHS OIG 2010 Work Plan is a must read because it includes a range of compliance hot spots that can turn into traps for unwary facilities that serve Medicare and Medicaid patients.


According to Jim Sheldon-Dean, director of compliance services at Lewis Creek Systems, the work plan should become part of your compliance process, which is an ongoing project. He advises that one should not try to figure out every year what's in it; instead you should go from year to year and keep up with things as they're added.


According to Sheldon-Dean, here are the highlights of the OIG Work Plan.


The first one is continuing emphasis on adverse events. Adverse events are basically things that go wrong that shouldn't. Previously, they were known as ‘never events' but now the name has changed and includes five sub-categories that the OIG is interested in.


New ...
... focus on conditions present on admission and readmission: This is relating to patients who checked out of your facility and either shouldn't have or they check back in for the same problems. The OIG will be looking to see if the problems they're coming in for should have already been taken care of. This often involves a problem that someone else besides your facility should have treated and therefore should not have been billed by you.

Health care cost reform:


While the OIG only makes mention of home health profitability, this could mean they're looking at bringing down health care costs in general; as such hospitals could be next. You can even attract attention from the feds if your facility is doing well financially.


Secure use of portable electronic devices:


This means making sure that the laptops flash drives, CDs your staff uses are encrypted and compliant with the HIPAA privacy rule.


ARRA/HITECH incentive payments:


New laws including the ARRA of 2009 and its included HITECH provide for financial incentives for hospitals to convert to using EHRs.



Provides weekly digest newswire about Health care cost reform and offers advanced Learning Opportunities for medical coders and billers according to 2010 OIG Work Plan.