“If you look at who the primary group responsible for overpayment is when you’re looking at hospitals, hospice, home health, and hospital/outpatient in skilled nursing facilities, you can see that [SNFs’] rate here is much higher than the other entities,” said Alicia Cantinieri, vice president of MDS policy and education for Zimmet Healthcare Services Group. “That’s why they’re looking at us.”
Improper payment rate is a measure of payments that don’t meet the Medicare requirements for whatever reason, she said. It’s not the same thing as fraud rate.
Zimmet, in partnership with Simple, hosted a webinar Monday on the improper payment probe, which included advice on how SNFs can spot errors through internal audits.