Dive Brief:
- The Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General has released a report that outlines 25 recommendations the OIG made to HHS programs that the programs have not yet implemented. The vast majority of the recommendations were made to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
- The report claims that failure to implement the recommendations has cost US taxpayers and beneficiaries around $24 billion.
- Some of the recommendations were rejected by CMS; it claims it is working on others.
Dive Insight:
According to the report, the expected impact of implementing the OIG's recommendations would vary from direct cost savings to improvements in payment efficiency, program operations and/or quality and safety. The OIG says that many of the recommendations in the report have seen some progress but as of now, they have reason to believe more should be achieved. CMS attributes many of the delays to legislative or other obstacles.