Federal Reports

The Reports Consolidation Act of 2000 requires the U.S. Department of Education (Department), Office of Inspector General to identify and report annually on the most serious management challenges the Department faces. The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 requires the Department to include in its agency performance plan information on its planned actions, including performance goals, indicators, and milestones, to address these challenges. To identify management challenges, we routinely examine past audit, inspection, and investigative work, as well as issued reports where corrective actions have yet to be taken; assess ongoing audit, inspection, and investigative work to identify significant vulnerabilities; and analyze new programs and activities that could post significant challenges because of their breadth and complexity. Last year, we presented five management challenges: improper payments, information technology security, oversight and monitoring, data quality and reporting, and information technology system development and implementation. While the Department remains committed to addressing these areas and has taken or plans action to correct many of their underlying causes, each remains as a management challenge for fiscal year 2016.

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Altru Hospital (the Hospital) (operating in Grand Forks, North Dakota) complied with Medicare billing requirements for 241 of the 253 outpatient and inpatient claims we reviewed. However, the Hospital did not fully comply with Medicare billing requirements for the remaining 12 claims, resulting in overpayments of $66,000. Specifically, nine outpatient claims had billing errors, resulting in overpayments of $39,000, and three inpatient claims had billing errors, resulting in overpayments of $27,000. 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.