The Government Operations an Audit Committee meets Wednesday to review, among other matters, the Single Audit Report for Fiscal Year 2018. Bob Mercer reports that state government let millions of dollars slip away:
Revenue Department officials didn’t adequately reconcile business taxes, motor fuel taxes and collections from motor-vehicle titles and registrations, increasing risk errors won’t be prevented, detected or corrected.
Social Services Department officials didn’t accurately calculate Medicaid reimbursement rates for inpatient hospitals, resulting in more than $6.7 million of overpayments, including more than $4.1 million of federal funds.
Health Department officials paid $25,000 to a medical doctor for articles he was supposed to provide for a statewide newsletter but didn’t.
Legislative Audit also identified continuing problems for the Corn Utilization Council and the Soybean Promotion Council [Bob Mercer, “South Dakota Lawmakers Will Hear Annual Report from Auditors,” KELO-TV, updated 2019.04.20].
The doctor in question is doctor and consultant Jeff Luther of Sioux Falls, who won Contract #18SC090190 on June 1, 2017, for up to $25,000, to “serve as the state medical director consultant to the EMS Program, review and recommend Basic Life Support Guidelines, review and recommend Scope of Practice guidelines for EMS providers, public one article per quarter in the EMS Program newsletter, [and] assist in the development of a quality assurance program statewide.” The audit report says payment was supposed to be at $100 per hour, Luther’s invoices “did not identify the hours worked, only that the amount was due for professional services performed under the contract.”
Luther has two $25K contracts with the Department of Health this fiscal year. Contract #19SC090155 is for the same gig, minus the newsletter articles. Contract 19SC090643 engages Luther to do the “planning and implementation of medical direction awareness for EMS medical directors” and to “serve as the medical director for the Naxolone Project and provide guidance to Office of Rural Health staff.”
The Department of Health agrees with the audit recommendation that they “ensure that contract requirements are met prior [to] making payment.” I now doctors’ penmanship can be bad, but it’s not too much to ask a doctor to write the articles his contract called for… and to write down some clear record of the work we’re paying him to do.
Dr. Luther also contracts with Minnehaha County and the City of Sioux Falls as their EMS consultant. You should see the rag-tag reports he submits. The last time he reported to the County Commission they told him to come back with a more thorough report, than he blamed the volunteer rural ambulance services for not giving him that data. He’s a total scam artist.
Betcha a buck the good doctor gave plenty to GNoem and company.
Sorry, Jerry: my quick scan of Noem’s campaign finance docs doesn’t show Luther on her donor list. But that was just a quick scan by address; I welcome deeper scans by others.