VA overpaid third-party providers by $100 million, Inspector General says

new report by the Veterans Affairs Inspector General says that over the course of one year, the agency overpaid third-party providers by more than $101 million, mostly due to a bulk-payment process that lacked controls that would have prevented duplicate payments.

The money went to third-party administrators — HealthNet and TriWest — from March 2016 to March 2017 under the Patient-Centered Community Care Program, including Veterans Choice, which allows veterans to seek care at medical facilities outside the VA.

According to the report, the over-payments were the result of the VA’s use of a bulk payment process — designed to expedite processing — that failed to review individual claims and had inadequate internal controls to detect duplicates.

Before the bulk-payment system, the VA used controls including the “Program Integrity Tool,” to review claims. However, those tools led to long delays in repayment.

Read more: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/sd-me-va-overpay-20180906-story.html