The Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently released a report after identifying that Medicare had been improperly paying for Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) care for beneficiaries who had not met the Medicare 3-Day inpatient hospital stay requirement.

The law, at §1861(i) of the Social Security Act and the relating regulations in Title 42 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) § 409.30 stipulate that for Medicare to cover SNF services, that the beneficiary must first, “have been hospitalized in a participating or qualified hospital for medically necessary inpatient hospital care, for at least 3 consecutive calendar days, not counting the date of discharge.”