State of California's Efforts to Account for the Use of Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program Funds and Monitoring of Subrecipients

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The objectives of this review were to determine whether the California Department of Health Services (State agency):  (i) properly recorded, summarized and reported bioterrorism preparedness transactions in accordance with the terms and conditions of the cooperative agreement, (ii) established controls and procedures to monitor subrecipient expenditures of Health Resources and Services Administration funds; and (iii) used Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program (Program) funds to supplant funds previously provided by other sources.  We determined that the State agency:  (i) generally accounted for Program funds in accordance with the terms and conditions of the cooperative agreement and applicable departmental regulations and guidelines and had segregated costs by phase, but had not segregated expenditures by priority planning area, (ii) had not made any site visits to subrecipients but planned to begin audits approximately 6 to 12 months after allocations are distributed to recipients; and (iii) had not used Program funding to supplant existing State or local funds.  We recommended that that the State agency:  (i) segregate expenditures by priority planning area, benchmarks and type of provider as planned; and (ii) implement the audit plan being developed for monitoring subrecipients and address problem areas, if any are identified. The State agency concurred with the conclusions of the report.