Audit critical of state agency that funds services for people with developmental disabilities

The Maryland agency responsible for funding community-based services for people with developmental disabilities had significant issues with its process, failed to comply with state procurement regulations and did not properly monitor services it funded, a critical legislative audit released Friday said.

The Developmental Disabilities Administration failed to identify millions of dollars in overpayments and missed out on millions more in federal reimbursements at a time that the agency’s website says there is high demand for funding for services and it cannot meet all requests.

“We determined that DDA’s accountability and compliance level was unsatisfactory,” the audit said. “The primary factors contributing to the unsatisfactory rating were the significance of our audit findings and the number of repeat findings.”

The audit found that the agency had not sufficiently addressed five of the ten findings from a previous audit.

The Developmental Disabilities Administration plans, develops policies and funds Maryland’s system of services for people with developmental disabilities and their families. Its community-based services are funded through Medicaid, a waiver program or state-funded services.

In one significant issue revealed by the audit, the agency did not identify recurring overpayments made over several years totaling $1.7 million to a provider. Instead those overpayments were discovered by the provider.

The overpayments were of an improper designation in 36 people receiving shared living services that cost less than the residential services they were improperly designated for over a period between December 2014 and February 2017.

But the auditors also believed that the total amount could have been higher because the Developmental Disabilities Administration failed to identify whether overpayments were made outside of that time period.

“We estimated that additional overpayments totaling $2.4 million were made to this provider for these 36 consumers during the period from July 2011 through November 2014,” the audit said. “We did not attempt to identify other consumers which should have been billed for shared living services rather than residential services and to estimate the full extent of overpayments made to this provider or to other providers.”..

https://thedailyrecord.com/2019/07/12/audit-critical-of-state-agency-that-funds-services-for-people-with-developmental-disabilities/

LINK TO AUDIT