Open Recommendations

Direct TAMU to provide documentation supporting that it has repaid or otherwise credited the $13,362 of questioned indirect costs for which it has agreed to reimburse NSF.

Direct TAMU to strengthen its administrative and management processes and internal controls for applying indirect costs to Federal awards. Processes could include: a. Requiring that personnel manually review material and supply purchases to evaluate whether TAMU should account for the items as equipment. Specifically, TAMU should consider whether the items purchased have a useful life that exceeds one year and a value that exceeds $5,000, and/or if the items are necessary for the use of an asset that meets those criteria. b. Requiring that personnel manually review purchases from consultants and vendors whose collective billings exceed $25,000 each to ensure…

Direct TAMU to strengthen its administrative and management procedures and internal controls related to procurement processes. Processes could include: a. Conducting annual training for individuals who are responsible for approving service expenses that require a sole-source justification and requisition before the vendor or consultant begins providing the services. b. Implementing a control to flag service expenses from vendors that have invoiced a cumulative total of more than $10,000 to ensure that TAMU has executed a service agreement with each vendor before processing the payment.

CMS should assess the results of infection control surveys and revise the survey as appropriate.

CMS should work with States to help overcome challenges with PPE and staffing.

CMS should clarify expectations for States to complete backlogs of standard surveys and high-priority complaint surveys.

IHS should provide additional guidance and training to facilities on patient protection policies, including the role of law enforcement and the reporting process related to patient abuse.

IHS should improve the process and timeliness for conducting staff background investigations and notifying facilities when staff are approved.

IHS should examine and revise, as needed, the reporting structure in the policies and the incident reporting system to ensure that staff and patients can report abuse anonymously.

IHS should establish and enforce a deadline by which all facilities must fully incorporate the new requirements into their policies and procedures, and actively monitor facility adherence.

The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should develop processes and procedures to retain and provide access to historical ERS data, including actions taken by tax examiners.

Identify and take action on the population of terminated beneficiaries with underpayments payable to eligible beneficiaries and individuals.

Revise its alerts or clean-up operation to identify and resolve underpayments for terminated beneficiaries.

To ensure that PTC is operating reliably, we recommend that the Chief Operations Officer, in conjunction with the Chief Safety Officer, work with the company's Information Technology department to research electronic tools to access and report on PTC data and submit preferred options for funding consideration.

Complete actions to implement our prior recommendation to establish an automated solution that identifies disabled SSI recipients who may be entitled to CDB.

We recommend that the New York State Department of Health refund $54,456,563 to the Federal Government.

IHS should assess the costs and benefits of updating its EHR system with tools to support more automated monitoring.

IHS should request support from States and from Federal partners to address challenges with State-run PDMPs.

IHS should implement quality improvement plans to improve patient safety across IHS, including plans that focus specifically on smaller hospitals and patient groups at higher risk of harm.

IHS should assess its labor and delivery practices and consider practice improvements based on the findings of this assessment.

IHS should take steps to ensure that IHS providers employ best practices in diagnosing and treating postpartum hemorrhage.

IHS should encourage and support greater adoption of AIM’s bundles of maternal-safety best practices.

Develop and implement a mechanism in an electronic system to ensure that contract actions that require legal reviews according to PBGC policy receive these reviews and that disagreements with legal sufficiency comments are communicated to OGC.

Develop and implement procedures that include detailed requirements for planning and managing laboratory consolidation efforts. Requirements should address developing master plans and programs of requirements, tracking and updating cost and schedule estimates, and maintainingdecisional documentation.

OIG recommends that the Bureau of Diplomatic Security develop and execute a corrective action plan that implements the recommendations of its evaluation (Recommendation 1).