Hospitals should be ready to face an audit of their severe malnutrition diagnosis codes on inpatient claims.
The HHS Office of the Inspector General recently announced it would audit hospitals to see whether they complied with billing requirements related to these codes.
A 2020 audit conducted by the office for severe malnutrition diagnosis codes found that of 200 claims reviewed, only 27 were error-free. The alleged errors in the sample resulted in hospitals receiving $914,128 in overpayments. Based on the sample, the office estimated that hospitals received more than $1 billion in overpayments from coding errors.