BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A new audit raises questions about money management in the Louisiana Department of Health, just as lawmakers are considering ways to cut spending to close a state deficit.
Louisiana Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera’s report found the department didn’t have a process to recover $29 million in Medicaid claims and filed more than $250 million in erroneous reports with the federal government.
Also, auditors say the agency didn’t properly track the spending of $73 million in federal funds on a nutrition program for pregnant women and infants.
The Advocate reports (https://bit.ly/2klzd0N ) Health Department officials say they are working to rectify the issues. A plan for corrective action is to be completed by the end of June.
“No money was lost. It was categorized incorrectly to the feds and was fixed. There’s no missing money,” said Andrew Tuozzolo, the agency’s chief of staff.
Of the $29 million in back-owed claims cited by the auditor, Tuozzolo said, the Health Department hired a contractor in June to do the collection work and intends to recover the money.
But the findings come as lawmakers already were eyeing the Health Department’s more than $12 billion budget as a place to make cuts, to help rebalance the state’s $27 billion operating budget and eliminate a $304 million deficit.
“They seem to be mismanaging a few things here,” said House Appropriations Chairman Cameron Henry, R-Metairie.
Henry said the findings that an agency “can misspend or not account for hundreds of millions of dollars makes it difficult for legislators to come in and listen to the administration discuss how their agency needs more money.”
Gov. John Bel Edwards is calling lawmakers into a special budget-rebalancing session that begins Feb. 13. He’s faced resistance to his proposal to use $119 million from the “rainy day” fund to lessen cuts. House Republican leaders have suggested the Health Department should be a target to shrink spending, rather than using a state savings account, but Edwards said deep cuts would be damaging to health services.
The Health Department budget includes about $2.8 billion in state tax dollars. The rest comes from fees, other dedicated sources and federal financing.
Generally, the auditor’s office concluded the Health Department didn’t have adequate measures in place to track compliance for the money it oversees. Edwards spokesman Richard Carbo noted the problems began when former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration was in office.
Tuozzolo said the agency has made significant efforts “fixing the problems of the Jindal administration.” He said the audit shouldn’t be used to hammer the agency but rather to show the “substantial progress” the Edwards administration has made in cleaning up problems it inherited.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.