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OIG Finds PCG Inappropriately Altered Medicaid Documents!
Our old friends from Public Consulting Group (PCG) were found to have accepted improper Medicaid payments in New Jersey.
Those of you who have followed my blog will remember that PCG has been the “watchdog” and auditor of Medicaid claims in many, many states, including North Carolina, New Mexico, and New York. The story of PCG’s motus operandi is like an old re-run of Friends – it never seems to end. PCG audits health care provider records, usually about 150 claims, and determines an error rate based on a desk review by an employee who may or may not have the requisite experience in health care or regulatory compliance issues. The error rates are normally high, and PCG extrapolates the number across a universe of three years (generally). The result is an alleged overpayment of millions of dollars. Of course, it varies state to state, but PCG is paid on a contingency basis, usually 12 – 15%. See blog.
In a November 2017 Office of Inspector General (OIG) Report, OIG found that, in New Jersey, PCG, which was the contractor for New Jersey doctored records.
Isn’t that called fraud?
OIG found that New Jersey did not follow Federal regulations and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) guidance when it developed its payment rates for Medicaid school-based services and, as a result, claimed $300.5 million in unallowable costs. Among OIG’s findings, OIG determined that PCG improperly altered school employees’ responses to time studies to timestudies to indicate that their activities were directly related to providing Medicaid services when the responses indicated the activities were unrelated.
OIG recommended that New Jersey repay $300.5 million in federal Medicaid reimbursements. If you are a taxpayer in New Jersey,
you know that you are hanging Sec. Carole Johnson in effigy…at least, in your mind.
According to the New Jersey Medicaid website, PCG receives and processes billing agreements from newly Medicaid-enrolled LEAs, which is the acronym for “Local Education Agency.”
Here are PCG’s duties:
The New Jersey State Agency claims Federal Medicaid reimbursement for health services provided by schools under Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) through its Special Education Medicaid Initiative (SEMI). The State Department of Treasury (Treasury), the administrative manager for SEMI, hired PCG, on a contingency fee basis (shocker) to develop SEMI payment rates and submit claims on behalf of schools, which are overseen by the State Department of Education (DOE). Figure 1 (below) illustrates how New Jersey processes and claims Medicaid school-based services.
But notice the last bullet point in the list of PCG’s duties above. “provides ongoing Medicaid legal and regulatory compliance monitoring.” Of itself?
Only costs related to providing Medicaid-covered services may be included in payment rates for Medicaid services. But, remember, PCG is paid on contingency. See below.
So is it surprising that PCG raised the reimbursement rates? Why wouldn’t they? If you were paid on contingency, wouldn’t you determine the rates to be higher?
OIG’s report states that New Jersey, through a contractor (PCG), increased the payment rates retroactively to July 2003 from $552 to $1,451 for evaluation services and from $21 to $50 for rehabilitation services. This significant increase raised the question of whether the State was again using unallowable costs.
According to OIG, out of 1,575 responses from school employees, PCG recoded 235 employee responses in order to receive payment from Medicaid. Of those 235 recoded responses, OIG determined that 203 claims were incorrectly recoded by PCG. My math isn’t the best, but I am pretty sure that is approximately a 85% error rate. Shall we extrapolate?
Examples of improper activity code alterations included a social worker indicated that they were “scheduling students to see the [social worker].” Social worker coded this activity as “general administration” – correctly by the way. PCG altered the code to indicate that the employee was providing health care services in order to get paid for that time.
PCG incorporated learning disabilities teacher-consultant salaries in the evaluation rate. These salaries are unallowable because teacher-consultants provide special education services, not health-related services.
In a description of its rate-setting methodology, PCG stated that it excluded costs associated with learning disabilities teacher-consultants because they do not perform any medical services and are not medical providers as customarily recognized in the State’s Medicaid program. However, OIG found that PCG did not remove all learning disabilities teacher-consultant salaries when calculating payment rates
OIG calculated the amount of just that one issue – learning disabilities teacher-consultant salaries incorrectly incorporated – as more than $61 million. What’s 13% of $61 million (assuming that PCG’s contingency rate is 13%)? $7,930,000.
OIG recommended that New Jersey Medicaid:
- refund $300,452,930 in Federal Medicaid reimbursement claimed based on payment rates that incorporated unallowable costs,
- work with CMS to determine the allowable amount of the remaining $306,233,377 that we have set aside because the rates included unallowable costs that we cannot quantify, and
- revise its payment rates so they comply with Federal requirements.
PCG disagreed with OIG’s findings.
Another recommendation that OIG SHOULD have found – Get rid of PCG.
