Federal Reports

Medicare makes supplemental payments to hospitals, known as outlier payments, which are designed to protect hospitals from significant financial losses resulting from patient-care cases that are extraordinarily costly. Unlike predetermined payment amounts for most Medicare hospital claims, outlier payments are directly influenced by hospital charges. We selected CHI St. Vincent Infirmary (St. Vincent) based on outpatient outlier payments increasing from $216,484 in 2013 to $1.4 million in 2014.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) completed a final action verification of all eight recommendations in our July 2015 report on the Audit 24601-0004-31, Food Safety and Inspection Service Ground Turkey Inspection and Safety Protocols. Final action verification (FAV) determines whether the final action documentation the agency provides to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) supports the agency’s management decision reached with OIG. 1, 2 Our objective was to determine whether the documentation the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) provided to OCFO was sufficient to close the recommendations made in Audit Report 24601-0004-31

The Office of the Inspector General audited the effectiveness of TVA’s phishing training provided to TVA users and determined that it was ineffective. In addition, we found TVA does not have formal procedures for conducting periodic phishing exercises, follow-up training for users who failed the periodic exercises, or consequences for users who fail to take the required phishing training. TVA management agreed with our findings and recommendations.