WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows that complaints from Medicare beneficiaries about the prescription drug benefit declined by 74 percent over the 18-month period ending Oct. 31, 2007, from 2.86 complaints per 1,000 beneficiaries in May 2006 to 0.73 in October 2007.
The time needed to resolve complaints, meanwhile, decreased from 33 to 9 days, the report found. Some of the most sensitive complaints, however, involving beneficiaries in danger of exhausting their medicine supplies, were not resolved within two days, as would be deemed adequate, the GAO said, but rather took an average of 12 days.
The agency reviewed almost 630,000 complaints filed with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as part of a performance audit.
The review found about 63 percent of complaints were related to problems processing beneficiaries’ enrollment and disenrollment requests; another 21 percent were related to the pricing and coinsurance category of complaints. Most complaints did not involve the risk of exhausting medications, and virtually all complaints were listed as resolved.
The full report can be found at www.oversight.house.gov.
