U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) highlighted the importance of better oversight after a new report showed that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) continues to rely on inaccurate, incomplete and untimely data that limits the ability of the federal government to make proper payments to states.
Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Walden, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report deemed the Medicaid program as “high risk” for the last 14 years.
“This GAO report reiterates that much work needs to be done to improve data integrity at CMS on the behalf of both taxpayer and patients,” Hatch and Walden said in a joint statement. “As the agency is soon to be under the direction of a new administrator, it is our hope CMS will work to implement the GAO’s recommendations as soon as possible.”
The report found that fewer than half of states submit data through a new CMS data system designed to streamline and improve state data reporting, which may have contributed to $36 billion in payment errors in 2016 alone.
The CMS administrator should take immediate steps to assess and improve the data available for Medicaid program oversight, including refining overall data priority areas, the GAO report concludes.
CMS’s 2016 Actuarial Report estimated the federal government paid $363 billion in Medicaid expenditures and covered 72 million beneficiaries in 2016. Over the next 10 years, total federal and state expenditures are projected to increase at an average annual rate of 5.7 percent to reach $957.5 billion by 2025, CMS said.
Bipartisan members of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee requested the GAO report.