Management agrees with the three findings and recommendations for corrective action to ensure that these instances do not occur again.
1. During the year ended December 31, 2023, the final project report was not submitted timely, as directed in the Notice of Award, as the “Not Completed Task” list in the HRSA Electronic Handbook portal indicates the Final Report is due October 29, 2025, which is 90 days after the grant’s budget period. The true due date was October 26, 2023, which was 90 days after Project Completion, which was when the New York State Department of Health approved the renovated space for occupancy following a site visit on July 28, 2023. The final project report due October 26, 2023 was submitted on August 13, 2024.
2. The December semi-annual report due December 14, 2023 was submitted one week late, on December 21, 2023.
3. The FFR submitted on October 24, 2023 was submitted with inaccurate data. The FFR due October 29, 2024 was submitted on August 6, 2024 and included the $749,892 that was omitted from the prior FFR to ensure that all funds were accounted for in the FFR reported to HRSA via the Payment Management System.
Flushing will also implement the following controls and procedures to prevent any future untimely report submissions or submissions with inaccurate or omitted financial data:
4. The grants contract manager, along with the director of planning, will review all programmatic grant reporting requirements in all Notice of Awards, amendments and agency portals to ensure completeness of reports due and their respective deadlines. All programmatic reports going forward will be reviewed by the grants contract manager along with the director of planning and will be submitted on a timely basis going forward. The grants contract manager in conjunction with the director of planning will monitor the HRSA website on a monthly basis to ensure no deadlines are missed regarding the required reports for the grant in question.
2. Going forward, the expenses related to cost-reimbursement grants will be accrued/accounted for on an accrual basis prior to the submission of the FFR, even though we may not be able to drawdown the funds at that time.
These controls and procedures will be implemented by the end of the 3rd quarter of 2024.
Management responsible for corrective action plan:
James Farrell, Assistant Director, Development (jfarrel1@jhmc.org)
Viola Lingat, Senior Accountant (vlingat@jhmc.org)
Ira Freiman, Grants Accountant (ifreiman@jhmc.org)
Manzar Sassani, Vice President of Finance (msassani@jhmc.org)