A Hospice News article reported that the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently announced its plans to initiate a new audit of Medicare payments for hospice general inpatient (GIP) services that will focus on hospice GIP services furnished to Medicare beneficiaries who were discharged directly to hospice GIP care from an acute hospital stay.
“OIG and CMS have for many years questioned why GIP usage rates were so low among the general hospice population, so it is curious why OIG is focused on these particular hospice GIP claims at this time,” said partner Howard Young, who also authored a Health Law Scan blog post on the new audit. “A safe assumption is that OIG is auditing these ‘high-risk’ GIP claims to determine if hospices are overutilizing that higher level of care for certain acute care inpatients.”