We’ve written about the Recovery Audit Contracts (RAC) program previously and thought it would be worthwhile to check back in on recent news in this space. According to CMS, in FY 2012, RAC auditors collected $2.29B in 2012, nearly three times the amount recouped in 2011.
What’s apparent from this data is that a large step up in audit activity is obviously occurring, which will only accelerate in 2013 as auditors begin looking at evaluation and management (E&M) CPT codes commonly used by family physicians outside of the hospital setting. In fact, when we match this CMS data against the latest results from the American Hospital Association’s RACTrac survey of 2,260 hospitals, it’s even more obvious that the level of activity around responding to requests for patient charts and managing the audit process is growing at an extremely rapid pace.
