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A legislative audit of $200 million in Covid-19 response grants found the Minnesota Department of Health had adequate oversight but failed to explain the awards or avoid conflicts of interest.
The report. It was released on Wednesday The Legislative Auditor’s Office praised the department’s overall leadership of the new grant program in the teeth of the new and incurable epidemic.
However, grant evaluators sometimes skip factors needed in decision-making, such as whether applicants have access to other sources of funding or are at risk without funding, said Lori Layson, OLA’s deputy legislative auditor. In other cases, the distinction between grant requests and actual awards is not specified in the paperwork.
“When you have things missing on the score sheet and there are some inconsistencies between the award amounts, it makes you question some of the decisions you’ve made,” she said.
In a written response, state Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm disagreed with some of the findings and said some have already been corrected. Overall, she said, she’s pleased her department has enough control over funding — at a time when its evaluators have shifted to remote work and health care providers and public health agencies are clamoring for funding.
“It was a new aid program that was supposed to be up in record time,” Malcolm said in an interview Wednesday morning. “Typically grant processes take a long time to build and execute, but there was an urgency to get these dollars out and I think it made a big difference in being able to get those dollars out so quickly.”
The grants include $50 million in emergency funds awarded in spring 2020 to respond to Minnesota’s first wave of Covid-19. The biggest rewards have gone to hospitals for reducing the risk of spreading infectious diseases by creating Covid-19 testing sites and installing negative airflow systems in patient rooms.
Hennepin Healthcare received $5 million, HealthPartners received $4 million and Allina Health received $3.5 million. Smaller grants are made to senior care facilities, fire departments, clinics and public health agencies. The small prize of $342 went to an ambulance provider in Sunburg, Minn.
An additional $150 million was appropriated by the Legislature to continue pandemic response efforts, allow providers to pay workers and increase supplies of Covid-19 tests, masks and other personal protective equipment. The department has received more than 2,432 requests for a total of 1 billion dollars Report to the legislature last year. Malcolm was awarded 1,314 grants.
Leyson agreed with the program’s challenges during the pandemic, but said some evaluation policies should become second nature — even in times of crisis — to a department with highly experienced management and grants. Of the 35 grant evaluators, 29 did not complete the required conflict forms and six only partially completed the forms.
The statements are “intended to ensure fairness among the applicants, so there is no unfair advantage,” he said.
In emergency situations, the department sought waivers for some of the grant requirements, including conducting site reviews to determine whether the funds were being used appropriately. of Auditor in August The state Department of Human Services was guilty of failing to comply with this requirement in issuing grants to address homelessness. However, he did not review the performance of the health department due to the termination.
Leyson said this was appropriate in the wake of the outbreak, but urged departments to only seek such outages when necessary and return to normal grant-making processes as soon as possible.
The grant program was unusual, because the department gave the money to the recipients in advance, instead of returning it after the fact of spending. The audit encouraged the department to speedily complete the audit of the recipients and recover unspent funds. Malcolm said this process should be completed by the end of October.
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