Speaking to the Joint Committee on Health during the last legislative interim meetings for the year, Interim Inspector General for the Departments of Health, Human Services, and Health Facilities Ann Urling said budget cuts have kept her office at a 40 percent vacancy rate for staff positions.
“The budget reallocation process has stripped the Office of the Inspector General’s budget of the necessary resources to make meaningful hires and get individuals that possess the required expertise, experience and qualifications,” Urling said. “This cycle of under-funding perpetuates our staffing shortages and hinders the overall productivity and effectiveness of the Office of the Inspector General.”
Urling said the office has also faced issues since splitting from the Department of Health and Human Resources earlier this year, especially around accessing federal funding. Urling broke down the office’s “braided funding model,” which involves multiple streams of income from state and federal sources – a model that Urling said can be difficult to track.
After Urling said she submitted funding for acquiring new vehicles, since many employees need to travel the state for their work, her paperwork was unexpectedly rescinded.
“I couldn’t get a clear explanation other than federal dollars are complicated, and there’s a lot of nuances to it,” Urling said.
The office’s role is to provide oversight on the health programs, now spread across three departments. It is responsible for fraud, waste, neglect, and abuse investigations. These include managing roles like the Foster Care Ombudsmen and SNAP and TANF investigations. Urling says she needs more staff to fulfill that work.
“We shouldn’t just be giving money and giving money, because that’s what we’ve always done,” Urling said.
She also asked the legislature and governor to delegate auditing power to the office.
“If the legislature and the executive branch want to have effective oversight over these important programs, I’d suggest we evaluate what we’re doing here,” Ursling said.
For submitted complaints, Urling called for resources to revamp the office’s system to be able to track when and how complaints are submitted and addressed. Currently, the office does not monitor these complaints in a central database, which Urling said leads to issues like people sending complaints via faxes that “don’t always necessarily get through.”
For those looking to report a complaint, the Inspector General for the Departments of Health, Human Services, and Health Facilities’ phone number is (304) 558-2278.