Newfoundland and Labrador Auditor Common Denise Hanrahan stated Wednesday that points with the province’s Medical Care Plan (MCP) and Dental Well being Plan stay unresolved greater than a decade after they had been first recognized. Hanrahan delivered a efficiency audit report back to the Home of Meeting, highlighting ongoing considerations with compliance, info expertise, and oversight.
Hanrahan famous that most of the points outlined within the new report mirror these recognized in a 2014 MCP audit, which discovered an ineffective compliance operate, outdated and complicated IT techniques, and an inner audit operate that was “ineffective and underutilized.”
“The problems I’ve recognized on this audit report are among the identical points that had been reported in 2014, and I’ve but to obtain an inexpensive clarification for why these points stay unresolved greater than a decade later,” she stated.
The MCP is the province’s publicly funded medical insurance plan, protecting doctor providers for residents. It contains the Kids’s Dental Well being Program, which supplies common entry to eligible dental providers for youngsters 12 and beneath. Protection additionally extends to youths aged 13 to 17 whose households obtain earnings help, in addition to some grownup dental applications.
‘Ageing digital infrastructure’
Hanrahan described the “growing older digital infrastructure” as contributing to “inefficiencies, frustration for suppliers, and elevated dangers from error or fraud.”
“But the interior audit operate, which is supposed to mitigate that danger, doesn’t use the instruments and processes obtainable,” she added. “With low productiveness, procedural issues and insignificant recoveries, I query the effectiveness of the division counting on its inner audit operate as an oversight measure for the MCP program.”
Hanrahan additionally expressed considerations over the Division of Well being and Group Companies’ capability to make sure that public well being care funds are “distributed appropriately to well being care suppliers – medical doctors and dentists – for the providers they supply to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.”