The HHS Office of Inspector General is recommending California and Colorado refund the federal government for Medicare payments the states received.
In an audit published Oct. 25, OIG said it found California had made overpayments to care providers for patients with multiple Medicaid identification numbers. California said these Medicaid enrollees were assigned multiple identifications because of human error in data entry.
California agreed with the OIG's recommendations to refund the federal government approximately $15.7 million in overpayment, improve its algorithms to detect enrollees with multiple numbers and review training with staff to avoid issuing multiple numbers.
In Colorado's case, OIG is seeking $3.7 million in refunds from the state. An audit published Oct. 25 found that Colorado did not collect and return the correct amount of funds owed to the federal government from Medicaid fraud cases in the state.
According to the audit, Colorado agreed with the amount of unreturned funds the audit found, but did not agree with the recommendation to refund the $3.7 million. The state said it would review the findings to determine if the amounts are "not uncollectable" and return the federal government's share by Sept. 30, 2023.