Federal Reports

This report details the results of our review of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) sole-source contract award to Industrial Economics, Incorporated. On April 20, 2010, an explosion on the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil well drilling platform released approximately 4.9 million barrels (210 million gallons) of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Our objective was to determine whether NOAA properly documented the justification of awarding a September 2011 sole-source contract with Industrial Economics, Incorporated.

We conducted this audit to examine BIS’ progress in transitioning to USXPORTS. We began this audit with two objectives: to determine whether BIS was (1) effectively and efficiently managing its transition toward using USXPORTS to perform export licensing processing and (2) using effective and efficient software development practices for CUESS. However, during our fieldwork, we decided to forgo analysis on the second objective, as CUESS is currently in production with no plan for major development work on the system.

The New Jersey Department of Human Services (State agency) did not adequately oversee its Medicaid nonemergency medical transportation brokerage program to ensure that (1) vehicles used to transport beneficiaries met State standards, (2) drivers were licensed and qualified, (3) prior authorizations were obtained, (4) transportation providers maintained required insurance coverages, (5) beneficiaries received Medicaid-eligible medical services on the date of transportation, and (6) services were documented.

Christian Hospital (the Hospital) (operating in Saint Louis, Missouri) complied with Medicare billing requirements for 95 of the 199 outpatient and inpatient claims we reviewed. However, the Hospital did not fully comply with Medicare billing requirements for the remaining 104 claims, resulting in overpayments of $341,000 for calendar years 2012 and 2013. Specifically, 89 outpatient claims had billing errors, resulting in overpayments of almost $280,000, and 15 inpatient claims had billing errors, resulting in net overpayments of almost $62,000. These errors occurred primarily because the Hospital did not have adequate controls to prevent the incorrect billing of Medicare claims within the selected risk areas that contained errors.

This grant provided the majority of the approved budget was for staff salaries, benefits and indirect costs.