Arkansas Did Not Make Supplemental Payments in Accordance With Federal Requirements

Arkansas did not always make the supplemental Medicaid payments in accordance with Federal requirements. Sixteen of the 120 supplemental payments in our stratified random sample were correct. For 88 of the remaining 104 supplemental payments, Arkansas incorrectly calculated the amount of the payments. An additional six supplemental payments were correctly calculated but were made to ineligible providers. The remaining 10 supplemental payments were both calculated incorrectly and were made to ineligible providers.

On the basis of our sample results, we estimated that Arkansas improperly received at least $7.1 million in additional Federal share, of which we recommended that Arkansas refund approximately $3 million to the Federal Government for the Federal share associated with the inappropriate supplemental payments.