Our Office examined payment requests processed by the Workers' Compensation Board (Board) during the period January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2011. The objective of our examination was to determine whether payment requests were appropriate in accordance with the Workers' Compensation Law. We found 707 inappropriate payment requests totaling over $61.1 million in overpayments and $450,000 in underpayments for the period. The payment requests we stopped included typing errors, duplicate payments, computation errors and payments not properly calculated according to the Workers' Compensation fee schedules.
In November 2011 the Board initiated improvements to their processes for submitting payment requests to the Comptroller's Office for audit. This included enhancing the payment system to capture correct fee schedule amounts, providing guidance to employees to reduce data computation errors, and enhancing the quality review process to more readily identify data entry errors. As a result of these changes, the monthly average of stopped payment requests decreased from 52 per month in the period January through October to 35 per month in November and December.
We recommended the Board continue to implement internal controls necessary to reduce errors identified in this report. Board officials indicated they will pursue enhancements to its financial management system designed to further reduce potential payment errors.
For a complete copy of the 2011 Payment Examination Report, click here.