Department of Health

Duplicate Medicaid Transportation Payments (Follow-Up Review)

The Medicaid reimbursement rate for certain hospitals, clinics and other facilities is intended to cover all the services provided by the facilities, including transportation services. If Medicaid recipients at the facilities receive transportation services from outside providers, the providers should be reimbursed by the facilities. However, in our initial audit report 2001-S-65, we found that some providers billed Medicaid for these services, and Medicaid paid both the transportation providers and the facilities. We identified at least $9.7 million in such duplicate payments during our two-year audit period, and estimated that as much as $31.1 million in additional duplicate payments may have been made. We recommended that the payments be investigated, all overpayments be recovered, and controls be improved to prevent such overpayments in the future. In our follow-up review, we found that the Department of Health had made little progress in correcting the problems identified in our initial audit.

For a complete copy of Report 2004-F-2 click here.