State officials who are supposed to keep an eye on how local social services departments determine eligibility for Medicaid aren’t putting in much effort, a new Office of the State Inspector General report finds.
It said that of 121 scheduled monitoring projects only 39 — less than a third — were ever actually conducted in fiscal years 2014 to 2017.
None of the 25 scheduled monitoring projects in the state Department of Social Services’s eastern region, which includes Hampton Roads, were.
DSS said it didn’t keep to its scheduled of monitoring because of employee turnover and challenges implementing a its Virginia Case management system. It promised to do better.
The inspector general’s office also said it could find no evidence of any of the corrective action plans local departments of social services are supposed to prepare, and state officials are supposed to review when there are problems with local agencies’ support of Medicaid programs.
Other issues the inspector general found include a lack of standards for defining the accuracy of Medicaid eligibility determines, and gaps in the communication of information about Medicaid eligibility and the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program.
DSS generally agreed with the inspector general’s findings and promised to fix the problems.
Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com