The OIG Releases New Hospital-focused Work Plan Updates

The Office of Inspector General's (OIG) work plan was once upon a time only updated once or twice a year. Which made it pretty easy and predictable to stay atop each update. But on June 15, 2017, in an effort to improve transparency around OIG's continuous work planning efforts, the OIG made a move to begin updating its work plan website monthly. While these regularly posted updates were a welcome change, we compliance professionals had to retrain ourselves to regularly check in and identify work plan items that could impact our individual organizations.

The OIG’s mission is to protect the integrity of Health and Human Service programs, and by extension, the health of the people served by those programs, through its conducting of audits and investigations. It then uses the findings of this work to set its priorities moving forward. And based on these recent updates, it’s clear they’re prioritizing much of their efforts particularly on hospitals.

So if you are a compliance professional working in a hospital setting, or a health system with hospitals, we recommend proactively looking at the items the OIG has recently added to their work plan, and insure your organization remains compliant across these new work plan items. Which is why we created a new eBrief just for you titled, “OIG Work Plan Updates: Hospitals.” Inside, you’ll get a break down of all the recent updates related to hospitals, including:

• Hospital Experiences During COVID
• Controls to Prevent Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Related to Orthotic Braces
• Follow-up Review for Outpatient Services Provided During Inpatient Stays
• Oversight of the Two-Midnight Rule for Inpatient Admissions