Review of Medicare Credit Balances at Coney Island Hospital

摘要

Our objective was to determine whether Medicare inpatient and outpatient credit balances recorded in the hospital's accounting records as of December 31,2008, and April 30, 2009, respectively, represented overpayments that the hospital should have refunded to the Medicare program. We reviewed all Medicare inpatient credit balances recorded in the hospital's accounting records as of December 31,2008. We limited our review of outpatient credit balances to those over 1,500 and a random sample selection of those over 100 which were recorded in the hospital's accounting records as of April 30, 2009. 1 We did not review thee hospital's overall internal control structure. Rather, we limited our review of internal controls to obtaining an understanding of the hospital's accounting for and reimbursing Medicare for overpayments. We performed our fieldwork from March through August 2009 at the hospital's administrative offices in Brooklyn, New York.