Federal Manager's Daily Report

The VA and HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have partnered to share data, data analytics tools and best practices for identifying and preventing improper payments in claims.

The partnership builds on efforts between the country’s two largest public-private health-care payment organizations by applying improvements in program integrity protocols made by CMS to the VA’s claims payment process, an announcement said.

The CMS in 2010 established a center for program integrity that it estimates saved $17 billion in 2015 alone, in cooperation with law enforcement. The VA “plans to capitalize on the advancements in analytics CMS has made by concentrating on its use of advanced technology, statistics and data analytics to improve fraud detection and prevention efforts,” the announcement said.

Separately, the VA recently invited industry experts to provide information on the latest commercial sector tools and techniques to enhance VA’s fraud detection capabilities, and in April will invite them to demonstrate their capabilities for detecting, preventing and recovering improper payments.