Audit: NY Paid $3M for Dead Patients
By CANDICE CHOI
ALBANY, N.Y. – The state paid medical providers $3.6 million in the past three years for thousands of Medicaid patients who were dead, according to an audit released Wednesday.
One nursing home collected $15,000 for a patient two years after the patient died, according to the audit by state Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
The audit found payments being made for 4,277 dead patients from April 1, 2003 through Feb. 3, 2006. Hevesi’s office could not provide an estimate of how much the state may have paid for dead patients prior to the audit period.
“It’s safe to assume this has been an issue for years,” said Jeff Gordon, a spokesman for the comptroller’s office.
New York has the most expensive Medicaid program in the country. About 4.1 million people in the state receive benefits totaling about $44.5 billion a year.
A New York Times report last year found that between 10 percent and 40 percent of Medicaid costs in New York was attributable to fraud and waste. The U.S. General Accounting Office has stated there is no reliable estimate on the amount of fraud.
Improper payments were made in part because the state Health Department doesn’t have a uniform process for local officials to take patients out of an electronic system after they die, according to the audit.
The department will review the cases and try to recover the lost money, said Marc Carey, a department spokesman.
“When you see something where a nursing home re-certifies a patient for two years after they’re dead, that raises a red flag,” he said.
Medicaid patients are also re-certified on an annual basis, so a “lag time” is built into the payment system, Carey said. He said the Health Department will work with counties to find a way to update the system more quickly.
The federal Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, which oversees the programs, did not immediately know whether similar problems have cropped up in other states.
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On the Net:
New York State Office of State Comptroller: http://www.osc.state.ny.us/