BISMARCK, ND ( KXNET ) — An audit of the Department of Health and Human Services by the North Dakota State Auditor’s Office has found three issues that show a pattern of errors committed by the organization.

The audit was for a two-year period ending on June 30, 2023.

The first issue is with the taxpayer-funded $7.26 million Workforce Retention Program. This program was intended to provide workforce retention grants for caregivers across the state who provide community and home-based services to people on Medicaid.

The grant was supposed to give up to $2,100 to eligible caregivers, but the audit found that some ineligible caregivers received the money, and some businesses didn’t pay their eligible employees. It also says the DHHS hadn’t measured whether the program was effective as of June 30, 2023. The DHHS hired a third-party consultant to do this, but the results were limited.

The DHHS agreed with the audit’s recommendation to fix these issues and has started a program to support recruitment and retention of the direct care workforce since then. The Auditor’s Office has not evaluated the program yet.

The DHHS also said they will follow existing policies to recover the funds not used according to the program’s guidelines.

The audit also identified two other issues.

First, the North Dakota State Hospital, which is overseen by the DHHS, was found to do a poor job of safeguarding controlled substances. The audit found that they didn’t always inspect the safeguards over their medication inventory when supposed to and that they didn’t properly secure, dispose of, or track controlled substances in some cases.

The audit also reported that the DHHS and the State Hospital implemented strict rules to prevent these things from happening again and that the security of their substances has improved since then.

Lastly, and perhaps most alarmingly, children in extreme abusive situations were not always being checked on or removed from those situations in the mandated time, according to DHHS records. This same issue was brought up by the Auditor’s Office in 2016.

The DHHS’s policy, as well as national ones, requires face-to-face contact with victims of child abuse between 24 hours to 14 days after the report is filed, depending on its severity. The audit team found that this requirement was not met in 25 of the 30 cases the audit tested.

The audit showed that there were many mistakes made in data entry regarding the dates of face-to-face contact listed in the department’s tracking system, and recommended that the DHHS fix those and monitor them.

The audit showed that improvements have been made since then, but full compliance with the policies has not yet been reached.

Audits are conducted every two to four years.

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