TOPEKA — An expansive audit of Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s payments to companies contracted to deliver services under the state’s Medicaid program found $1.3 million in inappropriate compensation for care of people who had actually died.
Steven Anderson, the state’s Medicaid inspector general, said the examination found 25 instances from 2015 to 2020 in which KDHE cut checks for beneficiaries who were deceased. When the report was issued last week, KDHE hadn’t yet recouped the cash from the managed-care companies handling KanCare. Approximately 360,000 Kansans are Medicaid recipients.
In addition, analysis by Anderson of the period from July 2019 and July 2021 showed KDHE had identified $19.2 million improperly paid to the contractors that was subsequently recovered by docking future payments. The mistakes caught by KDHE involved 632 cases in which the state continued making payments after a death. In 56 of those cases, the inspector general’s report said, inappropriate payments had continued for five or more years after the beneficiaries’ demise.