The President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency Debt Collection Initiative at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Region V Regional Office for the Period Ending September 30, 2000

The objective of this review was to determine the amount and collectibility of non-tax delinquent debt that was owed to Medicare and reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Region V Regional Office (RO), as of September 30, 2000.  Although we believe that the RO has reported and properly accounted for their outstanding accounts receivable and delinquent balances without any material misstatements, our review did disclose a net overstatement of $410,917 in the non-Medicare secondary payer (MSP) principle balance reported by the RO, attributable to problems detected in our reconciliation of the RO financial reports and the review of the sampled items. The discrepancies included improper location codes on the Provider Overpayment Report (POR) and the Physician Supplier Overpayment Report (PSOR), inaccuracies between account balances on the R751 and the POR or PSOR, duplicate amounts, and unrecognized collections. We also found that 44 percent of the sampled non-MSP receivables had inaccuracies in their outstanding principal balances and noted problems with the due diligence exercised by the RO in its collection efforts for 26 percent of the 34 receivables reviewed.