A little-noticed provision of the congressional agreement reached earlier this month removes a barrier to collecting overpayments which are more than three years old. 
 
Section 1870 of the Social Security Act states that auditors will assume the provider wasn’t at fault if an overpayment is discovered more than three years after the claim was paid, unless there is evidence to the contrary. Now, the compromise bill extends this period to five years.
 
In practice, this means that auditors have two more years to collect overpayments in cases where they have no evidence of fraud.
 
As first reported by Modern Healthcare, the inclusion of the change in the bill was prompted by a 2012 HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) report which found that the three-year statute of limitations prevented CMS from recouping some $332 million in overpayments.
 
Turn to the Jan. 14 HHL for more details on what this change means for future audits.