The Justice Department does not have effective measures in place to prevent fraud, abuse and waste in its program to provide compensation for employees with work-related injuries or illnesses, according to a DOJ Office of Inspector General report released today.
Except for the FBI and Bureau of Prisons, all DOJ sections audited by OIG were usually “reactive rather than proactive” in their supervision of Federal Employees’ Compensation Act cases, the report said. The Drug Enforcement Administration was the worst at staying up on FECA cases, according to the report. The DEA failed to provide almost half of the case files the OIG requested.
“Without the necessary documentation related to FECA cases, DOJ FECA specialists are unable to make fully informed decisions regarding these cases,” the report said.
DOJ had the fourth highest rate of injury out of 29 federal agencies between fiscal years 2005 and 2008, according to the report. More than $100 million in fiscal year 2008 went towards paying expenses associated with injuries and illnesses, which places the Justice Department seventh in the ranking of 29 federal agencies, the report said.
Every DOJ section OIG reviewed only supervised cases that were new and involved staff that seemed likely to come back to work.
“We believe that a review of older cases is important since medical conditions may improve over time and employees may reach a point where they could return to work in some fashion and contribute to the components’ missions,” the report said.
OIG also did not discover any evidence that DOJ sections looked over Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs chargeback reports that summarize FECA expenses by case number.
Here are excerpts from the OIG recommendations and the responses from Assistant Attorney General For Administration Lee Lofthus:
Recommendation: Develop a procedure to ensure each DOJ component establishes and maintains on site a readily available case file for the respective FECA cases listed on each component’s annual chargeback report.
Response: (Justice Management Division) concurs with the recommendation to develop procedures that will ensure that all DOJ components establish and maintain on site a readily available case file for FECA Ca5es listed on their respective chargeback report.
Recommendation: Establish minimum criteria in which each DOJ FECA Specialist should complete periodic case file reviews.
Repsonse: We concur with this recommendation and will set a high priority for the development of detailed, written procedures for periodic case file reviews.
Recommendation: Ensure that periodic medical updates are obtained and evaluated for reemployment opportunities for all DOJ employees on the chargeback report and second medical opinions are pursued when necessary.
Response: We concur with this recommendation to obtain periodic medical updates that will assist compensation specialists with return to work efforts.
Recommendation: Develop a process to routinely monitor and update FECA case files that will further DOJ’s efforts in returning employees back to work or to a light or modified duty assignment.
Response: JMD concurs with the recommendation to develop a process to routinely monitor and update cases files for the purpose of returning employees back t0 work.
Recommendation: Establish a procedure to ensure each DOJ component reviews the quarterly chargeback reports, identifies all possible errors, and reports errors to the OWCP for corrective action.
Response: JMD concurs that there are no written procedures to ensure that each DOJ component conducts routine reviews of their chargeback reports and report errors for corrective measure; however, DOJ components are tasked quarterly by JMD with reviewing their chargeback reports. There have been a number of credits and adjustments made to DOJ over past years due to proactive monitoring of quarterly chargeback reports.
This is an area that could possibly give relief to the deficit. DOL has to work WITH agencies and stop working for the person who is defrauding the govt with alleged “can’t work” schemes. The rules need to be tighten. Nothing is more agitating then to work a case and not have DOL work with you. People should be sent to a govt cleared medical person, cleared to return to work and if they don’t, they lose their job. Things are too easy for those who would rather sit at home and collect tax free dollars. This area has been overlooked for too long.
What is a govt cleared medical person???
What are your qualifications to comment on injuries, rehabilitation, etc ???? Do you presume to know more than MRI results, CT scans, myelograms, Xrays etc ?
DOL does work with Agencies. “Rules” need to be tightened? The law is in the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations and they aply to both employees and EMPLOYERS. “A govt cleared medical person” ??? would a voodoo doctor or an astrologer be acceptable? SD has no clue. The lae provides for an employee to choose a physician – could you imagine a world where the govt Dr treats you/ oh yea, Cuba and maybe or most likely not the public option. My board certified DR will due nicely.
The author of this “report” would make a good supervisor in the Triangle Shirt factory. This “audit” finds no fault with employers who fail to file CA-1’s CA-2’s, CA-16’s and CA-7’s in a timely fashion. It does not hold DOL acountable for making injured and sick employees wait months and years for benefit payments in many cases. It doesn’t mention how injured front line employees (e.g. BOP CO Pepe) need the intervention of US Senators to get living accomodations after horrific attacks by terrorists. “Audit” makes no mention of violations by employers of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 by not having “light duty” or making accomodations. This audit solves no problems inherent in this system and merely claims to have found money saving areas when in fact it will create additional expenditures.
First of all, the problems with the Federal workers’ compensation system are not as simple as scheduling second opinions on cases and establishing a system to monitor each case. Everyone needs to remember that there are only so many employees working for DOL and each one has hundreds if not thousands of existing cases let alone the new cases that come in each day.
Even if DOL adopted all of the recommendations offered up in this article or by the people posting here, you still wouldn’t get the results you want. Those results being that injured employees return to work as soon as they are released by their doctor’s and that injured employees get compensated quicker. The agency still has to come up with a suitable light or limited duty job offer that spells out the physical requirements of that job and employees and the agencies need to provide the information needed to process the claim quicker.
If you want real reforms that will work, ask somebody who knows the system from the inside and understands what the real problems are. To just say its all DOL’s fault is missing the forest for the trees.