Open Recommendations

We recommend that Novitas develop and implement enhanced procedures so that supervisors are better qualified to detect incorrect audit adjustments.

Develop and enhance procedures for travel charge card terminations to ensure the timely closure of travel charge card accounts for separated employees.

Review and, as necessary, adjust the individually billed accounts to ensure compliance with the established credit limits in the NRC Plan.

Establish a process for conducting periodic reviews of travel charge card accounts to strengthen oversight and monitoring of individually billed accounts and help ensure adherence to the credit limits defined in the NRC Plan.

Develop and implement procedures for periodic reviews of the credit limits for centrally billed travel accounts and adjust these limits, as necessary, for the anticipated operational need.

Determine if the $47,791 in questioned costs for first and business class travel are allowable and provide the corrective actions taken on any costs deemed disallowed.

The Under Secretary for Health ensures that consideration to reactivate the heart transplant program at the Richmond VA Medical Center includes a comprehensive analysis of transplant referral volume, leadership competency, and transplant team proficiency.

The Under Secretary for Health ensures that VA Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network and Richmond VA Medical Center leaders conduct a rigorous surveillance of quality measures if the heart transplant program is reactivated and emphasize safely meeting program target volumes to maintain clinical experience.

The VA Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network Director develops a process for ensuring VA Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network staff provide timely and complete responses to facility leaders’ requests for clinical care reviews.

Ensure that JFCS develops and implements written policies and procedures related to grant financial management to comply with the DOJ Grants Financial Guide and federal award requirements.

Ensure that JFCS develops and implements a procedure that consists of a review and reconciliation process of VOCA subaward expenditures prior to posting in its accounting records.

Ensure that JFCS enhances its fiscal policies and procedures to include a process or control (e.g., checklist or reconciliation) that facilitates a more robust review of expenses to ensure allowability with VOCA Guidelines.

Require Arizona DPS to complete its review of documents provided by JFCS that support corrective actions for FY 2022 and 2023 fringe benefit transactions and take remedial action if necessary.

Require that the Arizona DPS executes its single audit monitoring responsibilities to verify that the JFCS FY 2021 and 2022 VOCA-related single audit report findings, including any questioned costs, have been remedied.

1. We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office direct the Commissioner for Trademarks to develop controls to ensure that pendency targets and revisions to the targets are clearly documented and included in any public materials.

2. We recommend the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office direct the Commissioner for Trademarks to adopt a long-term pendency goal that accounts for stakeholder needs to allow for timely business decisions, particularly for international trademark applications subject to the Madrid Protocol.

3. We recommend the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office direct the Commissioner for Trademarks to set targets for the trademark pendency-related KPIs in the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan.

5. We recommend that the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office direct the Commissioner for Trademarks to formalize a methodology for estimating and validating efficiency gains in the trademark production model.

6. We recommend the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office direct the Commissioner for Trademarks to develop and implement a Trademarks workforce action plan that includes strategies to address challenges in recruitment and retention, milestones, roles of key organization components, measures of success, and a process to continuously assess and revise the plan.

We recommend that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health follow up with the two ICF/IIDs to verify that they have taken corrective actions on the life safety and emergency preparedness deficiencies identified during the audit.

We recommend that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health work with CMS to develop standardized life safety training for ICF/IID staff.

We recommend that the California Department of Aging refund the estimated $1,087,459 of CARES Act funds that were not in compliance with Federal and State requirements.

We recommend that the California Department of Aging work with ACL to determine the allowability of the estimated $2,484,631 in local service provider expenses and refund any amount determined to be unallowable.

We recommend that the California Department of Aging clarify in the Standard Agreement that AAAs review local service provider expenses to ensure they are documented and supported.

We recommend that the California Department of Aging update procedures to include approving advanced payments as close as administratively feasible to when the AAAs will expend the funds.