Medicare Home Health Agencies: Role of Surety Bonds in Increasing Scrutiny and Reducing Overpayments

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the surety bond requirements for home health agencies (HHA) participating in Medicare, focusing on: (1) analyzing the key features of surety bonds that affect their costs and effect; (2) examining the Florida Medicaid program's experience with a surety bond requirements for HHAs and its relevance to the Medicare surety bond requirement; (3) reviewing the rationale for the surety bond requirements the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) selected, the cost and availability of bonds, the benefits for Medicare, and the implications of substituting a government note for a surety bond as set forth in a Department of the Treasury regulation; and (4) drawing implications from the implementation of the HHA surety bond requirement for implementing a similar surety bond provision for durable medical equipment (DME) suppliers, comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facilities (CORF), and rehabilitation agencies.