ST. PAUL, Minn. — Governor Tim Walz has suspended payments to 14 Medicaid providers for 90 days for an outside audit to check for fraud There have been whispers for weeks about fiscal irregularities, giving ammunition tt Republicans against Walz, a Democrat, for sloppy management by his appointees. These concerns followed federal prosecutions against food suppliers — an entirely different matter — in state-managed emergency federal programs during the CoVid pandemic. About Medicaid issue, Walz’s state Department of Human Services recently identified these providers as high-risk.
Verbatim
Walz: “We cannot effectively deliver programs and services if they don’t have the backing of the public’s trust. In order to restore that trust we are pumping the brakes on 14 programs that were created to help the most disadvantaged among us, yet have become the target of criminal activity.”
> Adult Day Services.
> Adult Companion Services.
> Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services.
> Assertive Community Treatment.
> Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention services for autism.
> Housing Stabilization Services (now shut down and defunct).
> Individualized Home Supports.
> Integrated Community Supports.
> Intensive Residential Treatment Services.
> Night Supervision.
> Nonemergency Medical Transportation.
> Peer Recovery Services.
> Personal Care Assistance/Community First Services and Supports.
> Recuperative Care.
The Human Servuces agency noted “vulnerabilities, evidence of fraudulent activity, or data analytics that revealed potentially suspicious patterns, claim anomalies, or outliers.” Contracted for the audit was Optum, a division of Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group.