U S Government Accountability Office

National Medicaid Audit Program U S Government Accountability Office

" Medicaid, the joint federal-state health care financing program for certain low-income individuals, has the second-highest estimated improper payments of any federal program. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 expanded the federal role in Medicaid program integrity, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that oversees Medicaid, established the MIG, which designed the NMAP. Since the NMAP's inception, the MIG has used three different audit approaches: test, MSIS, and collaborative. This report focuses on (1) the effectiveness of the MIG's implementation of NMAP, and (2) the MIG's efforts to redesign the NMAP. To do this work, GAO analyzed MIG data, reviewed its contractors' reports, and interviewed MIG officials, contractor representatives, and state program integrity officials. "