The federal Office of the Inspector General has released a work plan for 2007--among the most detailed in recent years--that targets a wide range of activities and reimbursement areas important to hospitals, home care services, laboratories, rehab providers and psych facilities. Two important issues to be studied include:

• Supplemental payments to hospitals: The OIG is taking a closer look at adjustments for graduate medical education permits, nursing and allied health education, permits, inpatient hospital payments for new technology and organ procurement organizations.
• Hospital classification: The OIG is reconsidering a myriad of hospital classification issues, including inpatient rehab facility classification criteria, the Medicare dependent hospital program, inpatient rehab facility compliance with Medicare requirements, late assessment for inpatient rehab payments, PPS payments for inpatient psych facilities, long-term care hospital payments and classification, cost-based reimbursement for critical access hospitals and several aspects of outpatient PPS payments.

The OIG is also looking at several reimbursement issues in home care, skilled nursing facility and physician practices, Medicare Part D drug pricing, and a range of issues related to FDA and NIH-funded researcher accountability.

For more information on the work plan:
- read this summary [1] from Foley & Lardner
- review the OIG work plan [2] (.pdf)