U.S. to ask states to revalidate "high-risk" Medicaid providers

April 21 (Reuters) - Mehmet ‌Oz, who ​heads ​the agency that runs the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs, said on ‌Tuesday the Trump administration plans to ask ⁠all 50 states to revalidate Medicaid providers in what ‌he called "high-risk" areas as ‌part of an effort to reduce fraud.

Oz, speaking at Politico's Health Care Summit in Washington ​D.C., said that the audit will be announced this week and that the states will ⁠be asked to give the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services a ​plan to revalidate the providers over the next 30 days.

CMS is asking states "to ​make sure that legitimate providers ‌are providing services that you're paying for, and doing it the right ⁠way," Oz said. "These are non licensed individuals - often in unsupervised settings. You have to provide some additional ⁠level of audit to make sure that this is legitimately ​a valuable effort."

He did not provide a definition of what he meant by high-risk areas.

Earlier this year, the ‌U.S. paused the payment of $259 million of deferred Medicaid payments to Minnesota ‌following an audit, saying the state allowed the ⁠theft of federal funds ‌intended for social-welfare ​programs in the state.

(Reporting by Michael Erman and Chris Prentice; Editing by Chizu ‌Nomiyama)

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