Federal Reports

Freeman Hospital (the Hospital) (operating in Joplin, Missouri) complied with Medicare billing requirements for 180 of the 225 inpatient and outpatient claims we reviewed. However, the Hospital did not fully comply with Medicare billing requirements for the remaining 45 claims, resulting in overpayments of $311,000. Specifically, 42 inpatient claims had billing errors, resulting in overpayments of $304,000, and 3 outpatient claims had billing errors, resulting in overpayments of $7,000. These errors occurred primarily because the Hospital did not have adequate controls to prevent the incorrect billing of Medicare claims within the selected risk areas that contained errors.

At the request of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Supply Chain, the OIG examined a cost proposal submitted for construction and modification services. Our objective was to determine if the vendor's cost proposal was fairly stated for a planned $100 million contract. In our opinion, the proposal (1) included inconsistent and overstated labor markup rates; (2) did not comply with the request for proposal requirements related to nonmanual wages, resulting in overstated wage rates; and (3) included multiple fees in the Paradise Fossil Plant baseline costs. We estimated TVA could avoid about $3.34 million by (1) negotiating reduced labor markup rates and (2) reimbursing the contractor's actual salaries within established wage ranges instead of paying a single estimated wage rate for each labor classification. In addition, we found the contract's compensation terms and related attachments were inconsistent with the methodology TVA intends to use to compensate the contractor.(Summary Only)

For our final report on the sufficiency of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NOAA Fisheries’) research and progress toward implementation of electronic monitoring (EM) programs, our objectives were to evaluate NOAA Fisheries’ study, oversight, progress, implementation, and incorporation of EM into its National Observer Program and determine how NOAA Fisheries is executing its EM policy.