News: OIG to audit for malnutrition
February 24, 2022
CDI Strategies - Volume 16, Issue 8
The Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has announced its plan to audit hospitals for severe malnutrition diagnosis codes on inpatient claims.
The announcement comes after a 2020 severe malnutrition audit performed by the OIG that found only 27 of the 200 claims reviewed were free of error. The errors in the sample resulted in $914,128 in overpayments, therefore causing the OIG to estimate hospitals received over $1 billion in overpayments for the 2020 year because of severe malnutrition coding errors.
The upcoming OIG audit is expected to issue in fiscal year 2023.
Editor’s note: The OIG announcement can be found here. Additional ACDIS coverage of OIG audits can be found here.