Auditors confirm mistakes by HHS
State agency says it has fixed contract errors, price controls
AUSTIN — State auditors found sweeping contracting problems at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, a mega-agency responsible for overseeing billions of dollars worth of health care for the state's most vulnerable residents.
An audit of 28 contract awards for roughly $4.6 billion in government work found errors at every level, from scoring the vendor’s proposals to keeping track of all documentation.
The commission generally agreed with the report recommendations but said it has already made changes to its processes and put in place new controls, according to a response to the audit released by the Texas State Auditor’s Office.
The commission has been under fire for recent contracting issues, which forced the agency in April to cancel five contracts related to administration of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in rural areas and 10 South Texas counties.
Gov. Greg Abbott sent a top aide to the agency to reform operations in April, after calling some of the mistakes unacceptable. One month later in May, Commissioner Charles Smith, an Abbott appointee, retired. The agency is still without a permanent leader.
The audit, released Wednesday, confirms the concerns of lawmakers and state officials.
In at least five of the procurements — worth a combined $3.4 billion — auditors found major scoring errors and missing documentation, making it impossible to determine whether the winners’ scores were accurate. One of those contracts — worth $3 billion — was for STAR Kids, the Medicaid managed care program that covers children and young adults with disabilities. Another was the already canceled contracts for CHIP, which were worth $350 million.
For the remaining procurements, the errors didn’t have a significant impact on the selection of the vendor who got the contract, the audit found.
In a response that accompanied the audit, the commission said it hired a consultant to help examine procurement practices and overhaul them if necessary. The commission has “reviewed the large solicitations that were currently in various stages of the process and identified deficiencies that could be corrected to ensure a fair, legal, and defensible outcome,” it said in the response. The state agency, however, did not identify those contracts by name.