Podcast

scary zombies in window trying to get inside

The Scary Alternative to Medical Claims Audits

Medical claims audits aren’t scary, but the results of not performing them can be frightening! Audits are best practices in the healthcare industry, especially for self-funded health plans. Comprehensive audits involve a thorough review of claims to ensure they are accurately paid on behalf of the self-insured client.

Still hesitant about conducting medical claims audits…

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

  • The Alien Abduction Claim: An employee submits a claim for medical expenses incurred during an alien abduction. The auditor, being a rational person, dismisses the claim as a prank. However, the employee insists that the aliens had performed a complex procedure and provides evidence in the form of a shiny metal implant.
  • Time Traveling Employee: Imagine your employees submitting claims for tickets to the future or the past, citing “historical research” as the reason.
  • The Ghostly Illness: An employee submits a claim for treatment of a mysterious illness that only manifests when the employee is alone at night. The auditor, unable to verify the claim, recommends a consultation with a paranormal investigator.
  • Furry Family Members Submit Claims. Picture your employees submitting claims for their cat’s laser eye surgery or their dog’s dental cleanings.

Okay, so these scary scenarios are a bit far-fetched.

But the point is, finding errors in your medical claims ISN’T the worst thing that can happen. The WORST thing that can happen is that you DON’T find the errors – costing your company thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Addressing issues now can save money when the same error repeats year after year after year.

Why Audits Are Healthy  – not Scary – for Self-Funded Plans

  1. Identifying Errors and Inefficiencies: Audits can help uncover errors or inefficiencies in your claims processing that may be costing your plan money. Healthcare Horizons’ comprehensive audits review every healthcare claim and specifically target claims to review onsite with the carrier, rather than a random selection. This approach yields much better results because we identify both isolated and systemic errors and assign actual dollar impact to those errors. By identifying these issues, you can take steps to correct them and prevent future losses.
  2. Ensuring Fiduciary Responsibility: Legal experts are sounding the alarm about growing compliance risks as more healthcare costs are funded by employee contributions. This raises the importance of protecting the fiduciary responsibilities of employers. We believe one of the most fundamental elements in corporate oversight is sadly lacking in healthcare benefits administration at many companies – effective audit policies and practices. Many self-insured companies fail to have an annual audit of paid medical claims. Our comprehensive audit provides assurance that companies and employees’ healthcare costs are not being inflated by payment errors and abusive claims.
  3. Improving Plan Performance: Following best practices in healthcare claims management ensures the plan matches client intent, provides oversight of the administrator to ensure accuracy, implements cost-containment measures achieved by correct payment processing and identifies areas to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.

Healthcare Horizons can help you avoid common and hidden nightmares by providing a streamlined and efficient audit process. We also return overpaid dollars to your company bottom line. Don’t let fear or uncertainty hold you back. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your self-funded health plan.

Curious about the types of discoveries we make in our audits? Check out our Lost Benjamins chronicles if you want to read something really scary!


Healthcare Horizons is a leading expert in providing healthcare claims audit services, identifying overpaid or erroneous claims through our 100% Difference model and recovering millions of dollars for clients’ bottom lines while upholding the highest ethical standards. Since 1999, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company has provided superior healthcare claims audits for some of the world’s largest self-insured employers. We have successfully identified and facilitated the recovery of millions of dollars of overpaid claims for our customers.
three-way tie for winner

Your 2024 Lost Benjamin Award Winners

Lost Benjamin Awards highlights recovered dollars from comprehensive claims audits

It’s a Three-Way Tie

Our 2nd annual Lost Benjamin Award voting ended in a three-way tie! The most interesting thing about the winners is that they address each of the fundamental issues we commonly see in healthcare claim errors.

Systemic Errors Add Up

Benefit Errors Cost More Than 7 Million Dollars – Healthcare Horizons

Errors that aren’t caught can multiply and cost your business significant amounts of money in overpaid claims. When the error is a set-up or system issue in the processing of the claims, they are generally referred to as systemic errors. These errors can be small and often go unnoticed. One or two doesn’t seem to be a big deal. However, if the root of the problem isn’t addressed, that “no big deal” will quicky grow to a significant hit to your self-funded health care plan. That’s what happened in this case. Smaller errors went left unchecked for years and added up to a $7 million problem!

Persistent Review of Service Agreements

Seven is a Lucky Number! – Healthcare Horizons

You want to work with an audit company that won’t take no for an answer! With decades of serving clients and decades upon decades of employee experience, we recognize when something isn’t right and know how to fix it. Not only was a keen eye needed to spot this error, but once found, patience and persistence were required. The client’s TPA was convinced a fee included on multiple claims was appropriate as part of their agreement. Except, they couldn’t point out where the fee language originated. We recommend an annual review of your service agreements to make sure all the administrative fees are correctly explained.

Human Errors Can be Costly

Drowning in an Overpaid IV Claim – Healthcare Horizons

Safeguards should be in place to catch mistakes, especially the ones that defy logic. Unfortunately, not only do humans make mistakes, but they also don’t like to admit it when they do! While we aren’t playing the game of gotcha, we are good at finding those errors that make you scratch your head. And when we do, we believe correcting the error as soon as possible is the right thing to do. This winner was a classic example of a mis-entered claim, and the subsequent pushback from the TPA before the overpayment was returned to the client and their bottom line. Thankfully, we were able to outline the mistake and get everyone on the same page.

Sadly, This Isn’t the End

Nominations have started for next year’s awards. We continue to find overpayments in healthcare claims that are costing companies and their employees. You can bookmark the link here so you don’t miss an entry. Do you have an egregious claim error to share? Send your story to hhadmin@healthcarehorizons.com. Even more importantly, be sure you are having your claims reviewed with a comprehensive audit so that you don’t see your error on our award list!


Healthcare Horizons is a leading expert in providing healthcare claims audit services, identifying overpaid or erroneous claims through our 100% Difference model and recovering millions of dollars for clients’ bottom lines while upholding the highest ethical standards. Since 1999, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company has provided superior healthcare claims audits for some of the world’s largest self-insured employers. We have successfully identified and facilitated the recovery of millions of dollars of overpaid claims for our customers.
man scratching head about unexplainable error

Identifying the Unexplainable in Health Insurance Claims

There are plenty of things to make us go “hmmm,” but health insurance payments shouldn’t be one of them! Our job, every day, is to identify mistakes in healthcare claims payments and occasionally we run across a case where there just doesn’t seem to be a logical explanation for an overpayment. In 99% of these unexplainable, head-scratching cases, they are one-off processing errors.

How Do Unexplainable Mistakes Happen?

Perhaps you’ve heard the expression, “garbage in, garbage out.” And guess what? Everyone makes mistakes. When we see overpayments where there doesn’t appear to be logical explanations, the most likely reason is human error. These typically show themselves in two areas.

  • Coding errors: Medical billing codes are used to describe the services provided to a patient. These codes are complex and can change frequently. Even small mistakes in coding can lead to inaccurate payments. These can be entered incorrectly due to lack of knowledge about a procedure or unfamiliarity with a system.
  • Data entry errors: These errors include the wrong patient information, incorrect dates of service or incorrect billing amounts. Sometimes a data entry error is simply a slip of the fingers. Think of when you’re typing an email or texting. When you’re quickly moving, you often won’t realize you had a typo before you hit send.

Getting Reimbursed from the Typo

Healthcare Horizons’ comprehensive, “every claim,” review process makes us successful at identifying these one-off errors. This approach yields improved results because we identify both isolated and systemic errors and assign actual dollar impact to those errors, helping our clients correct the issue and recover the overpaid dollars. By going to great lengths to ensure that our medical audits are as thorough and accurate as possible, Healthcare Horizons has been able to recover millions of dollars in overpayments for our clients, as well as ensure long-term savings by correcting root-cause issues.

For a great example of a strange error, read our latest Lost Benjamins story


Healthcare Horizons is a leading expert in providing healthcare claims audit services, identifying overpaid or erroneous claims through our 100% Difference model and recovering millions of dollars for clients’ bottom lines while upholding the highest ethical standards. Since 1999, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company has provided superior healthcare claims audits for some of the world’s largest self-insured employers. We have successfully identified and facilitated the recovery of millions of dollars of overpaid claims for our customers.

“Winner” of Our Lost Benjamins Award and how to avoid being on the list

The Winner is – Clients that Found Benjamins!

The Lost Benjamins Award logo winner

Our new biggest loser competition – the Lost Benjamins Award – hit the ground running in 2022. Drum roll please…our 2022 winner is Man Glows After Hundreds of X-Rays on Same Day. It seems everyone agrees that not noticing a bill for 850 x-rays on the same knee on the same day is a mistake that shouldn’t happen. Fortunately, our comprehensive audit didn’t miss it and we were able to recover thousands of dollars for our client.

A close second was our largest recovery to date – a $1.7 million error! This was a classic case of failed checks and balances. Human error caused the mistake, but the backup – a review of the processed claim by an experienced employee – missed the overcharge. Thankfully, we didn’t! That number of Benjamins can help fund a lot of other worthy employee initiatives!

Payment Integrity Makes Sure Your Company Isn’t Our Next Winner

Most of the errors found in claims datasets are not intentional, but the rapidly changing healthcare system often makes accuracy a challenge for today’s workforce.

As staffing shortages impact every level of healthcare, including billing staff, medical coders and data entry specialists, steps need to be taken to minimize mistakes in the medical claims process. A payment integrity plan helps identify areas of weakness, correct problems and reduce the risk of future errors.

The payment integrity plan should encompass every phase of the billing cycle. This includes a review at the entry point to ensure common sense billing. Our Lost Benjamin Award winner above is the perfect illustration of the importance of starting the claim correctly! The next stage checks to be sure there isn’t fraud and to confirm medical necessity. Finally, the system should include an end-stage comprehensive review of claims. This is the last stop for finding errors and recovering overspent dollars.

Comprehensive Reviews are a Win-Win

Unfortunately, these winners are only a handful of the types of mistakes our audits catch on a regular basis. Are your audits finding these costly errors? If you are unsure, contact us for an assessment of your audit process. Our comprehensive reviews help control medical costs – and that’s a win for both the self-insured employer and their employees!

Thank you to everyone that submitted entries and voted in our first annual LBA contest. Don’t forget to check back each month to read about our latest Lost Benjamins nominees for 2023!


Healthcare Horizons is a leading expert in providing healthcare claims audit services, identifying overpaid or erroneous claims through our 100% Difference model and recovering millions of dollars for clients’ bottom lines while upholding the highest ethical standards. Since 1999, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company has provided superior healthcare claims audits for some of the world’s largest self-insured employers. We have successfully identified and facilitated the recovery of millions of dollars of overpaid claims for our customers.