Finding Text
Identification of the Federal Program: Grantor: Department of Health and Human Services Program Name: COVID 19 ? Provider Relief Fund and American Rescue Plan (ARP) Rural Distribution Assistance Listing No.: 93.498 Criteria or Specific Requirement: The terms and conditions of the Provider Relief Fund (PRF) award requires the recipient to submit reports as the secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) determines are needed to ensure compliance with conditions that are imposed on the award, and such reports shall be in such form, with such content, as specified by the secretary of HHS in future program instructions directed to all recipients. Condition: Other PRF expenses for payment received during payment period July 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021 were unintentionally included when reporting in the Health Resources and Services Administration PRF Reporting Portal (the Portal) for Catholic Health?s (Parent entity ? TIN #11-3403968) Reporting Period 4 Portal submission; the same expense amount was previously reported on the Reporting Period 3 Portal submission. The PRF Reporting Period 4 submission was intended to attribute only lost revenues to the payments received for the Period 4 timeframe, as documented in the lost revenue alternate methodology narrative prepared and included in the Period 4 Portal submission. Cause: A control was performed to review the report submission and confirm details in the report were prepared in accordance with the documented narrative around lost revenues and reporting methodology. However, the review was not precise enough to detect the inclusion of an expense amount attributable to Coronavirus that was not intended to be included in the report. Effect or Potential Effect: This resulted in an unintentional inclusion of an amount of eligible expenses reported within CH?s PRF Reporting Period 4 submission (July 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022) that was previously included in the Reporting Period 3 submission, when the intention of the PRF Reporting Period 4 submission was to only include lost revenues to attribute to the funding received. As such, the documentation included in the Portal is inconsistent with the Portal submission fields. Questioned Costs: None. Context: During our testing over the Reporting compliance requirement, we obtained the PRF Portal submissions for Reporting Period 3 and Reporting Period 4 for the Parent entity (TIN #11-3403968). We observed the same amount of eligible expenses included in the Reporting Period 3 Portal submission of $773,727 was also included in the Reporting Period 4 Portal submission. While inclusion of these expenses resulted in unintended reporting of eligible expenses in the Portal submission, the amount of lost revenues reported and carried forward from Reporting Period 3 was in excess of the Provider Relief Funding received. As such, there is no impact on meeting the requirements to retain the funding received as eligible expenses and lost revenues attributable to Coronavirus significantly exceeded the Provider Relief Funds received. Recommendation: We recommend that management refine the precision of its control to ensure accurate reporting in the Portal. Views of Responsible Officials: Management concurs with this finding. Management has refined its controls to ensure that there are multiple levels of review of all documentation included in the Portal, as well as review of the Portal input to ensure it is consistent with the supporting documentation.