Federal Reports

Our objective was to (1) determine whether the Social Security Administration (SSA) made payments to beneficiaries and/or representative payees who were deceased according to Louisiana Department of Health vital records and (2) identify non-beneficiaries in the State files whose death information did not appear in Agency records.

Under the home health prospective payment system (PPS), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pays home health agencies (HHAs) a standardized payment for each 60-day episode of care that a beneficiary receives. The PPS payment covers intermittent skilled nursing and home health aide visits, therapy (physical, occupational, and speech-language pathology), medical social services, and medical supplies.Our prior audits of home health services identified significant overpayments to HHAs. These overpayments were largely the result of HHAs improperly billing for services to beneficiaries who were not confined to the home (homebound) or were not in need of skilled services.Our objective was to determine whether Tender Touch Health Care Services (Tender Touch) complied with Medicare requirements for billing home health services on selected types of claims.

This audit report concluded that the FCC’s information security program was ineffective and not in compliance with FISMA legislation, OMB guidance, and applicable NIST Special Publications as of August 2020. Specifically, the FISMA evaluation report includes 8 findings and offers 17 recommendations intended to improve the effectiveness of the FCC’s information security program controls. The FCC has made improvements to processes within its information security program since the Fiscal Year 2019 FISMA evaluation in the areas of Identity and Access Management (i.e., separation of duties analysis, reviewing access for privileged users, and user authorization), Data Protection and Privacy (i.e., testing the FCC’s Data Breach Response Plan ), and Incident Response (i.e., documentation of incidents).