Compliance Oversight As the compliance officer at ABC Hospital, one of my major tasks is to research the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) website to locate the 2012 plan with a view of identifying compliance issues under review by the OIG. Generally, the Office of the Inspector General Work Plan establishes several projects to be dealt with during the financial year by the Office of Audit Services and other agencies or departments. The Work Plan has considerable impacts on each of its major entities including the public health agencies. While the information in the Work Plan is offered on projects associated with issues that intersect departmental programs, some of these projects are statutorily mandated.

Role of OIG Regarding Hospital Compliance

The Office of the Inspector General was established in 1976 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to play a crucial role in the country's efforts toward fighting abuse, waste, and fraud in various programs provided by this department including Medicare and Medicaid. In general, the main goal of the Office of the Inspector General is to safeguard the integrity of the department's programs and protect the health and well-being of the beneficiaries of the programs. The role of the Office of the Inspector General regarding hospital compliance...

The guidance and programs comprises principles that are used as compliance principles for hospitals. Moreover, the principles help in providing a more flexible approach through which hospitals can develop compliance programs to meet their respective needs and suit their financial resources (Gossett, 2008).
Compliance Issues Relating to Hospitals

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a Work Plan for 2012 financial year that incorporated brief explanations of new and continuous reviews and activities that the agency sought to pursue in relation to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' programs and operations. The Work Plan was geared towards enabling OIG accomplish its mission of protecting the integrity of HHS programs and operations while helping to ensure the safety and well-being of the programs' beneficiaries. While the Work Plan has played a crucial role in the organization's initiatives to achieve its mission, there are some compliance issues associated with the 2012 Work Plan relating to hospitals.

One of the compliance issues in the Work Plan relating to hospitals is Medicare inpatient and outpatient payments to acute care hospitals.…