A federal audit is charging Louisiana’s health department with mismanaging a $50 million post-Hurricane Katrina grant intended to restore health-care access to the New Orleans region. The Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that the state pay back $13.6 million of the money paid to doctors and other medical professionals as incentives to practice in and around the city. Lisa Faust, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, says the state has been working with federal officials to reach a resolution. She says the state will recoup much less than $13 million, in part because some of the audited errors were a matter of paperwork mistakes, not cases of fraud. “The whole point has been to see that the people get the health-care services,” she says.
Auditors examined contracts and records related to payments ranging from $10,000 for medical support personnel to $110,000 for physicians. A random sampling of 100 recipients listed in state records found that 33 met the conditions of the program, while 67 who received a portion of $3.2 million either should not have been eligible or did not meet the obligations set for recipients. When extrapolated, that sampling suggests, according to the audit, the state made impermissible payments totaling $13.6 million to more than 500 individuals. Congress authorized the program in a 2005 spending bill with the intent of retaining medical professionals and recruiting new ones to provide full-time clinical services in Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes and parts of Jefferson Parish.
