No one disciplined for Iowa Medicaid overpayments

No one responsible for data entry errors that caused the Iowa Medicaid program to send out overpayments of more than $9 million has been disciplined, a spokesman said.

The Iowa Department of Human Services will not identify anyone responsible for the mistakes in 2009, which were documented in a federal audit released last month that criticized agency procedures in place at the time, spokesman Roger Munns said. He noted that no money was lost because the mistakes were quickly discovered, and that changes have been made to prevent similar problems in the future.

The huge overpayments involved copying and pasting the wrong number - the provider number - into the amount to pay, according to the report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General.

Munns said the Pediatric Center of Cedar Rapids received a check for $171,000, but called to report that it was not entitled to the payment. He said the Mercy Diagnostic Center of Ankeny was sent a check for $9 million, but the mistake was discovered and it was cancelled before it arrived in the mail.

The federal report said the discovery of the mistakes took place outside the state's "existing policies and procedures" and internal controls, and that nothing in place at the time would have prevented the error. In response, Iowa Department of Human Services Director Chuck Palmer said employees have been barred from using the "cut and paste" function when entering data, and officials review the 10 largest claims that are manually entered every day to look for obvious mistakes, among other changes.

Munns said the checks at issue were part of a special project and not the routine way of paying providers. Most payments do not involve data entry, he said, since claims are typically filed electronically.

Munns said the department could have sought to recover overpayments if the checks had been cashed and that no other mistakes of this kind have been made since then.