County off the hook for overpayment
NORWICH – It sounded fishy on the surface, but the county isn’t on the hook for an additional $321,000 that a New York State Office of Mental Health audit found it was overpaid from 2003 to 2005.
The grab back was for money paid to counties to offset the cost of mental health services for deinstitutionalized psychiatric patients. Chenango County is responsible for paying the money back to the state OMH within the next 90 days before assessing a penalty.
Chenango County Treasurer Bill Craine said his office was “satisfactorily” taking care of the fine, and had set that amount aside plus an additional $80,000 that was found in a previous OMH audit of Chenango County Mental Hygiene Services. Both audits began almost simultaneously upon new department director Ruth Roberts’ arrival last year. Most of those were the result of missing signatures and dates of services not lining up with billing dates.
Roberts said she anticipated that more overpayments will also be owed back for the years 2006 through 2008, the year the Comprehensive Outpatient Psychiatric Services, or COPS program, ended. She did not predict the amount.
“We’ve been paid more COPS dollars than we’ve been entitled to. They want to retrieve it,” Roberts told members of the Chenango County Finance Committee last week.
She explained that the rate for COPs pay-outs had changed through the years, but the county continued to receive, and spend, the higher amount. Roberts said she had been working with the county treasurer’s office to set aside additional federal cost sharing dollars that have been flowing into the county department.
She said officials in the state department of health office in Albany made it possible for counties to draw down extra federal dollars to cover the overpayments found in the audit. “We were told to (request extra federal revenues) by them,” she said.
Several times during the Finance Committee session, Vice Chairman Dennis Brown, D-Pharsalia, said he didn’t understand why Roberts’ program wouldn’t be affected by federal revenues being used in this manner.
“Why was the COPS money spent? Why didn’t we send it back?” he asked. “I don’t know how your program cannot be affected, but I believe you. I’m glad we’re not on the hook.”
Both the county treasurer’s office and members of the Finance Committee say the audits’ findings could have been a lot worse.
“In the broad scope, we were fortunate to be treated as well as we were. Other counties were fined 10 times that amount. People make mistakes. All we can do is learn from it and not have it happen again,” said Finance Committee Chairman Lawrence Wilcox, R-Oxford.
The grab back was for money paid to counties to offset the cost of mental health services for deinstitutionalized psychiatric patients. Chenango County is responsible for paying the money back to the state OMH within the next 90 days before assessing a penalty.
Chenango County Treasurer Bill Craine said his office was “satisfactorily” taking care of the fine, and had set that amount aside plus an additional $80,000 that was found in a previous OMH audit of Chenango County Mental Hygiene Services. Both audits began almost simultaneously upon new department director Ruth Roberts’ arrival last year. Most of those were the result of missing signatures and dates of services not lining up with billing dates.
Roberts said she anticipated that more overpayments will also be owed back for the years 2006 through 2008, the year the Comprehensive Outpatient Psychiatric Services, or COPS program, ended. She did not predict the amount.
“We’ve been paid more COPS dollars than we’ve been entitled to. They want to retrieve it,” Roberts told members of the Chenango County Finance Committee last week.
She explained that the rate for COPs pay-outs had changed through the years, but the county continued to receive, and spend, the higher amount. Roberts said she had been working with the county treasurer’s office to set aside additional federal cost sharing dollars that have been flowing into the county department.
She said officials in the state department of health office in Albany made it possible for counties to draw down extra federal dollars to cover the overpayments found in the audit. “We were told to (request extra federal revenues) by them,” she said.
Several times during the Finance Committee session, Vice Chairman Dennis Brown, D-Pharsalia, said he didn’t understand why Roberts’ program wouldn’t be affected by federal revenues being used in this manner.
“Why was the COPS money spent? Why didn’t we send it back?” he asked. “I don’t know how your program cannot be affected, but I believe you. I’m glad we’re not on the hook.”
Both the county treasurer’s office and members of the Finance Committee say the audits’ findings could have been a lot worse.
“In the broad scope, we were fortunate to be treated as well as we were. Other counties were fined 10 times that amount. People make mistakes. All we can do is learn from it and not have it happen again,” said Finance Committee Chairman Lawrence Wilcox, R-Oxford.
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