Federal Reports

The Office of Inspector General is pleased to issue its Semiannual Report to Congress for the six month period ending September 2018. The theme for this Semiannual Report is “Sustainability and Innovation”. In achieving the results reported this period, OIG is leveraging its momentum that includes important factors such as success with standing up the OIG webpage and populating its content; revolutionizing our presence across the government; our partnership with oversight.gov; making the OIG hotline center operational and having a portal for receiving complaints and hearing about allegations concerning waste, fraud, and abuse; and actively participating to the DoD 898 Panel, where the AbilityOne IG is a statutory member.

Audit report on the U.S. AbilityOne Commission's 2018 financial statements, prepared by Davis & Associates CPAs, PLLC.

Our audit objectives were to determine whether the University of Houston completed verification of applicant data in accordance with Federal requirements and accurately reported verification results to Federal Student Aid (FSA). Our audit covered award year 2016–2017 (July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2017). We found that the University of Houston completed verification of applicant data in accordance with Federal requirements for 55 of the 60 students in our sample for award year 2016–2017. However, we found the University of Houston did not properly perform verification of applicant data in accordance with Federal requirements for 5 of the 60 students. Because the University of Houston did not properly perform verification for five sampled students, it improperly disbursed $14,004 in Pell funds for four students.The University of Houston accurately reported verification results to FSA for 59 of 60 students included in our random sample and for whom the school performed verification.

In a series of reports from 2008 to 2016, OIG found that adverse events and temporary harm events are common, endanger patient health, and are costly to the Medicare program. In a 2010 study, OIG found that 27 percent of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries experienced such events, costing Medicare approximately $4.4 billion a year. OIG then expanded on this work by examining post-acute-care settings, finding that 33 percent of Medicare beneficiaries in skilled nursing facilities and 29 percent of Medicare beneficiaries in rehabilitation hospitals experienced harm. This report builds upon this prior work, focusing on Medicare stays in LTCHs.

The Office of Inspector General is required to report to Congress the results of annual independent evaluations of the information security programs of Medicare administrative contractors (MACs). The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contracted with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to evaluate information security programs at the MACs, using a set of agreed-upon procedures. This report fulfills that responsibility for fiscal year (FY) 2017.

The OIG investigated allegations that a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) manager had used his position for the private gain of a friend, overruled decisions made by an employee’s supervisor regarding the employee’s leave and telework requests, and improperly influenced the award of a contract because of a personal relationship.We found that the BIA manager created the appearance of using public office for the private gain of a friend when he participated on the interview panel that recommended the friend, who was also his former fiancé, for a position within the BIA. We found no evidence that the manager influenced any decisions related to an employee’s leave or telework requests, or that the manager improperly influenced a contract award.