Apparently, having Recovery Audit Contractors in the news frequently has pushed some providers to change their coding practices. CMS has reported that the 2008 error rate for fee-for-service payments has decreased to 3.6 percent. Last year, improper payments for fee-for-service amounted to 3.9 percent of the total payments.

The CMS estimates that it has saved as much as $400 million over the last fiscal year. The agency also reported for the first time the improper payment rate of Medicare Advantage; in 2006, it reported the improper payments amounted to 10.6 percent, or $6.8 billion. The CMS also made clear that most of these errors are from incorrectly coded or medically unnecessary claims, not actual fraud.

To learn more about the figures CMS released:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece [1] (reg. req.)

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