Federal Reports

Under the Medicare home health prospective payment system (PPS), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pays home health agencies (HHAs) a standardized payment for each 60-day episode of care that a beneficiary receives. The PPS payment covers intermittent skilled nursing and home health aide visits, therapy (physical, occupational, and speech-language pathology), medical social services, and medical supplies.

The primary objective of the audit were to determine whether: (1) program funds were managed in accordance with the ARC and Federal Requirements, (2) grant funds were expended as provided for in the approved grant budget.

The Vista Station is in the Nevada-Sierra District of the Western Area. The delivery unit has a total of 52 routes (42 city and 10 rural). The 42 city routes are delivered by 54 carriers (44 full-time and 10 city carrier assistants [CCA]). The 10 rural routes are delivered by 17 carriers (nine full-time and eight rural carrier associates [RCA]). The Vista Station also has 11 clerks who perform retail and customer service functions. We selected the Vista Station based on our analysis of city carriers returning after 6:00 p.m. using data from the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). Our objective was to assess mail delivery service.

Michael Hollingsworth, a resident of New York, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, on November 19, 2019, for accepting a gratuity in return for his involvement in falsifying an Amtrak pre-employment drug test. According to the indictment, Hollingsworth worked as a drug test sample collector. He received cash from an Amtrak job applicant to submit a fraudulent sample to ensure the applicant passed Amtrak’s drug screening requirement. Hollingsworth will be sentenced at a later date.

We issued this to determine the effectiveness of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) incident response and continuous monitoring programs in identifying, logging, analyzing, blocking, containing, and reporting malicious activity and data exfiltration attempts.

We issued this to determine the effectiveness of Social Security Administration’s (SSA) incident response and continuous monitoring programs in identifying, logging, analyzing, blocking, containing, and reporting command-and-control payload delivery attempts.

This report summarizes the oversight work performed by EAC OIG during the 6-month period ended September 30, 2019.

We audited Del Norte Neighborhood Development Corporation based on information we received indicating that Del Norte may have violated the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) HOME Investment Partnerships program rules during the demolition of one of its low- to moderate-income rental developments. Our objective was to determine whether Del Norte properly transferred, stopped, modified, or extended the availability of affordable units for the Emerson Apartments, received HUD approval before demolishing the Emerson Apartments, and followed Federal contracting and procurement regulations while developing Veterans Apartments.Del Norte properly followed the Federal contracting and procurement regulations while developing Veterans Apartments. However, it improperly transferred eight units of HOME-funded affordable housing. Del Norte should have kept these units at West 32nd Apartments but violated HOME rules by transferring them to Emerson Apartments and then demolishing Emerson without HUD approval. This condition occurred because Del Norte lacked controls to ensure that it honored the HOME program’s affordability requirements. As a result, eight affordable units were no longer available for low- to moderate-income families.We recommend that the Director of the Denver Office of Community Planning and Development (1) work with the City of Denver Office of Economic Development to recapture $37,000 in HOME funds not properly used for the affordable housing projects, and (2) require Del Norte to develop policies and procedures to prevent ineligible affordability period transfers.