In its recent semi-annual report to Congress, HHS' Office of the Inspector General has again called on CMS to revamp their practices for identifying and combating electronic health record practices that can lead to fraudulent Medicare claims.
According to the report, the advent of EHRs has created a myriad of new ways for healthcare organizations to present inaccurate, misleading or inflated information to CMS, including overdocumentation and the overuse of the copy-and-paste function. However, CMS and its contractors have not yet adjusted their fraud detection procedures to find things like copied language.
Reprising its call from January, the OIG recommends CMS provide guidance to its contractors about identifying fraud in EHRs. The OIG also recommends CMS instruct contractors to use providers' audit logs, a feature of EHRs that could help identify misuse.
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