The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) recently announced that it would conduct a detailed review of the use of surety bonds by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) in regard to suppliers of durable medical equipment (“DME”).
Medicare-enrolled DME suppliers are required to maintain a surety bond against which CMS and its contractors can make claims and collect alleged Medicare overpayments. The required amount for the posted surety bond is generally $50,000 for each NPI the supplier maintains, but can be increased in certain circumstances. In theory, the bond provides a ready pool of funds from which CMS can collect overpayments without having to rely on recouping Medicare payments or forcing the supplier to pay the debt.
OIG asserts that it has long-raised concerns about fraudulent practices among DME suppliers and has reported that CMS underutilized surety bonds as a tool to protect Medicare from overpayments to DME suppliers. For example, OIG cites that CMS recovered only $263,000 from surety bonds of $50 million in overpayments identified for collection between October 2009 and April 2011. It is unclear why OIG is citing such out-of-date data or whether more recent data is available.