The 2016 OIG Work Plan was released on November 2, 2015 by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the Inspector General (OIG). While this year's version is a more diminutive 80 pages as opposed to 90 pages last year, don't let the slimmer document fool you-it's still full of investigative and enforcement activities for the coming year. As such, it's very worthy of your full and undivided attention.
The investigative and enforcement activities undertaken by the OIG in 2015 yielded some pretty impressive results:
- exclusions of 4,112 individuals and entities from participation in Federal health care programs;
- 925 criminal actions against individuals or entities that engaged in crimes against HHS programs; and
- 682 civil actions, which include false claims and unjust-enrichment lawsuits filed in Federal district court, CMP settlements, and administrative recoveries related to provider self-disclosure matters.
As you can probably tell, with the "success" that the OIG is showing, there's no sign that they will be stopping their activities anytime soon. Consequently, it is imperative that health care providers remain vigilant with their compliance programs.
We urge you to get familiar with the contents of the OIG 2016 Work Plan:
- Major categories in the OIG 2016 Work Plan
- Learn more about the 2016 OIG Work Plan
Download the OIG 2016 Work Plan
If you don't have an active and dynamic compliance plan, now is the time to start! If you already have one, make sure you carefully review the 2016 OIG work plan to insure that you are covering the areas of emphasis. If you are interested in reviewing the full text of the OIG 2016 work plan, please see the download link below.