Will fix pay flubs, say VA hospitals

Vendors got too much or too little

Two Veterans Affairs health care systems serving Arkansas veterans will work to correct mistakes discovered during a recent inspection of how they pay emergency transportation companies.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' inspector general's office audited eight health care systems -- including Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in Little Rock and Memphis VA Medical Center -- and found the locations made approximately $167,600 in improper payments during a five-month period.

Not all of the errors cost the agency money. In fact, the audit found the agency overpaid some vendors by $78,700 and underpaid others by about $88,900.

According to a report issued Monday, auditors estimated that as much as $11.2 million in improper payments could occur yearly if similar errors continued at the eight locations.

The errors were made through the Non-VA Medical Care Program, which allows the VA to pay for veterans to receive care during an emergency from hospitals not affiliated with the VA. In fiscal 2013, the VA spent more than $67 million on transportation costs through the program, and it spent more than $65 million in fiscal 2014.

The report states that while the program is "widely used," it suffers from a "lack of adequate oversight."

"We want to tighten up their controls so they're saving money, and so the program operates as economically and efficiently as possible," said Cathy Gromek, spokesman for the inspector general's office.

Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System serves veterans in 46 counties in southern and central Arkansas, and Memphis VA Medical Center covers a 53-county area that includes part of northeast Arkansas.

These two, along with systems in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona, California, New York and Kansas, were randomly selected for a review of how the VA pays the companies that transport veterans to non-VA hospitals.

Patricia Hill, spokesman for Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, said officials in Little Rock were looking over the report Tuesday but would not yet comment.

During the audit, inspectors looked at a sample of 353 payments that the eight sites made from April to September 2013. They found that 129 of the payments, or 37 percent, were made incorrectly.

After inspectors finished the audit in December, VA officials said they would instruct the eight systems by April to recover the overpayments and reimburse companies that were underpaid. The inspector general's office also asked that all VA staff members who process these claims undergo more training and that payments made for non-VA transportation be reviewed more often.

"Inaccurate payments affect VA's commitment to delivering timely and high-quality health care to veterans while controlling costs," stated the report, signed by Assistant Inspector General Linda Halliday.

It went on to say that more oversight is "essential."

According to the report, errors occurred when staff members approved payments to vendors who didn't submit claims on time. They also processed payments for the transportation of veterans who were not eligible to receive that benefit. Most of the mistakes -- 95 of the 129 -- were made because of miscalculations.

In one instance, a veteran was transported to a hospital because of chest pain and a fever, which was related to a condition the veteran suffered as a result of military service. The VA should have paid the transportation company the total billed amount of $1,800, but the health care system paid only $700 -- the amount that would've been paid if the veteran's condition was not related to military service.

Another example shows that the VA paid $15,300 to a transportation service that airlifted a veteran whose injuries were not related to military service. The vendor should have been paid only $3,200.

Metro on 03/04/2015

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