RAC Survey: 40% expect to owe funds to Medicare

Forty percent of health information management (HIM) directors at hospitals anticipate that their organizations will owe money to Medicare due to overpayments following an audit conducted by the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program.

This is one of many findings revealed in a survey of hospital HIM directors conducted by Wolters Kluwer Health. The survey also revealed that:

• 5 percent expect the RAC program to have a positive financial impact on their facility due to the recovery of funds from Medicare underpayments.
• 48 percent feel that their facilities will “come out about even” financially following an RAC audit.
• 77 percent said their facilities have conducted internal audits to prepare.
• 66 percent said their facilities have implemented documentation improvement programs.
• 57 percent have created a special task force to examine documentation, coding and billing.
• 33 percent have installed new software to capture correct documentation, coding and billing.

The survey also discovered that only 18 percent of HIM directors have hired additional coders to improve Medicare claims accuracy.