Review of Medicare Credit Balances at Selected Hospitals in California

This final audit report presents the results of our review of Medicare credit balances at 8 randomly selected hospitals of 113 hospitals for whom Blue Cross of California (Blue Cross) served as the fiscal intermediary. Our review showed that these 8 hospitals received $1,000,074 in Medicare overpayments which should have been refunded to the intermediary. Projecting the results of our review to the 113 hospitals, we estimated that the larger hospitals serviced by Blue Cross received and retained about $18.8 million in Medicare overpayments.