Nonprofit providers bear burden of more frequent compliance audits, survey finds

Nonprofit healthcare providers are disproportionately targeted by outside compliance audits when compared to their for-profit counterparts, a new report asserts.

One example: 47% of non-profit groups had audits conducted by two separate agencies looking at the same issue in a given year, compared to 25% of for-profit groups, according to a report by the Health Care Compliance Association.

In the HCCA survey period, 54% of for-profit providers had dedicated audit staff, compared to 44% of nonprofits.

While it was not surprising that larger organizations are audited more frequently, the authors said it is difficult to know why non-profits are audited more often.

Among both types of providers, the most common types of audits included Medicare's Recovery Audit Contractors, Comprehensive Error Rate Testing audits and Medicare Administrative Contractors. Additional auditing agencies highlighted in the report include OSHA, RAC Medicare, RAC Medicaid, Zone Program Integrity Contractors and the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General, among others.

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