Medicare Home Health Agencies: Overpayments Are Hard to Identify and Even Harder to Collect

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) oversight of the amounts of overpayments home health agencies (HHA) owe Medicare, focusing on: (1) whether HCFA quickly identifies and collects overpayments from closed HHAs; (2) the accuracy of the overpayment amounts HCFA reported for closed Texas HHAs; and (3) whether HCFA can effectively record and track overpayments due from closed agencies.