HHS Office of Inspector General Report Highlights Impact of SMP Program

July 25, 2024

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) published its report on the performance of the Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP) program in 2023. The report illustrates the national impact of the SMP program, based on OIG's analysis of data collected annually from programs in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

For example, in 2023, the SMP program:

• Provided information to help older adults protect themselves from health care fraud, errors, and abuse at more than 22,000 events, reaching a total of 1.2 million people.
• Worked one-on-one with (or on behalf of) more than 270,000 Medicare beneficiaries - a 10% increase over 2022 - to provide information, advocate to resolve billing issues, and more.
• Reported 26 emerging fraud schemes, providing OIG with the information needed to alert consumers about risk and how to protect themselves.

The report also describes how the SMP program helped Medicare recoup more than $111 million in fraudulent billings and helped Medicare and beneficiaries avoid thousands of dollars in unnecessary costs. The report notes that these significant accomplishments represent only a portion of the financial benefits of the SMP program - in many cases, Medicare beneficiaries use the knowledge gained through SMP's outreach and education programs to identify suspected fraud, which they then report through channels that are not connected to the SMP program (such as OIG's Medicare hotline).

View HHS OIG Report

About Senior Medicare Patrol

Billions of federal dollars are lost annually due to health care fraud, errors, and abuse. ACL's Office of Healthcare Information and Counseling manages the SMP grants. The SMP mission is to empower and assist Medicare beneficiaries, their families, and caregivers to prevent, detect, and report suspected health care fraud, errors, and abuse through outreach, counseling, and education. SMPs work to process, refer, and/or resolve beneficiary complaints of potential health care fraud in collaboration with state and federal partners, including HHS-OIG, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, state Medicaid fraud control units, and state attorneys general.

To learn more about SMP, visit the SMP National Resource Center website.