Audit finds wrong part of Medicare was used to pay for hospice patients' drugs

Modern Healthcare: Auditors Find Possible Excess Medicare Payments
The Medicare program could be paying multiple times for prescription drugs for hospice beneficiaries, a new federal report suggests. HHS' inspector general's office conducted a nationwide review of prescription drugs for hospice beneficiaries between January and December 2009 and found that Medicare Part D paid for a variety of prescription medications -- including analgesic, anti-nausea, laxative and anti-anxiety drugs and drugs to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease -- that should have been covered under the per diem payments made to hospice organizations under Medicare Part A (Zigmond, 7/4).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.