TAG Releases Letter from Auditor who Examined 708 Board Audit

TAG on side of buildingYesterday the Ethics and Compliance Committee of the McHenry County 708 Mental Health Board held a meeting to consider, among other things,

“FOLLOW UP ON TAG’S AUDIT AND RECONCILIATION – NEXT STEPS – FOR DISCUSSION”

I wanted to post the information below before that meeting, but didn’t get around to until now.

(The Northwest Herald has not posted an article on the meeting.)

The Advantage Group engaged the Sikich accounting firm to evaluate the examination of its books by the McHenry County 708 Mental Health Board..

Sikich is the same firm that audited McHenry County College this past year.

TAG has released a letter to its attorney, Steven Ruffalo, from V. Gregory McKnight, a Partner in the Sikich firm.

McKnight characterizes the examination’s being called an audit by putting the word “audit’ in quote marks.

He begins with a time line provided by TAG.

  • March 12, 2012 – “four staff members from {the] Mental Health Board to review the clinical records of 16 client files from 1-3 pm for a grand total of 8 hours.”
  • July 25, 2012 – “three staff members were on site at the TAG facility and they reviewed financial records and obtained copies of supporting documents prepared by TAG personnel from 10 – 11:30 AM for a grand total of 4.5 hours.”
  • September 5, 2012 – “the MHB’s audit was provided TAG.

The CPA says, “I do not understand how MHB could have reached the conclusion made about TAG in its report based on the limited amount of time spent performing their procedures.

“In contrast, I know what it took my professionals to perform the appropriate amount of work as noted in our report. I utilized 6 staff people over several days at TAG and in my office to perform the procedures noted in our report. Out cumulative time investment in this project exceeded 120 hours. Our procedures included

  • reconciling the service fees and billings to financial reports
  • tracing fees in underlying documents to insure completeness of the transactions
  • agreeing service fees to the DARTS reports to insure coordination of benefits, etc.

“This was a tedious and labor intensive process, but one that was necessary to arrive at the conclusions in our report.

“A second concern is that only 16 client files were selected for audit.  I do not know how these files were selected but it appears that a random sampling method for testing (either statistical or non-statistical) may not have been employed in the selection process.

“Management is under the opinion that these 16 files may have been selected on the criteria that the chosen patients had been in treatment for a long time.

“In order to reach a conclusion as to the sampled population as a whole the sample must be selected in such a way as to represent the entire population under audit.

“Generally accepted auditing standards indicate that audit sampling is the selection and evaluation of less than 100% of of a population so that the auditor expects the items selected to representative of the population (that is, it would result in similar conclusions as would be drawn for tests applied to the entire population) and, thus, likely to provide a reasonable basis for conclusions about the population (AU-C 530.05).

“The selection of a series of case files that are not expected to be representative is not a sampling application and, therefore, not subject to the standard.

“As a result, conclusions reached about such a sample cannot be extrapolated to the population as a whole.

“However, in this case the results of the tests appear to have been inappropriately extrapolated by MHB to the entire population.

“Overall, the amount of time spent and the sample selection leave open the possibility that the conclusions reached by MHB staff were either hastily arrived at, inappropriate or should have been limited to only the 16 case files reviewed.

“Management noted that compliance audits performed by DASA have never found issue with TAG’s billing or processes in any year audited.

“We not that our procedures only applied to the 16 case files noted above and we did not and cannot extrapolate our findings to the population as a whole.”


Comments

TAG Releases Letter from Auditor who Examined 708 Board Audit — 12 Comments

  1. Hey Michael Bissett and Paula Yenson….

    You have a lot of explaining to do in regards to your political agenda and TAG….

    Paula it would be best if you removed yourself from the County Board “Now”

    BYE Paula, Tina Hill and Anna May Miller….

    The tax payers do not need any more political agendas with influence on productive County Business such as TAG…

    You did a very serious disservice to our community…..especially the kids that were in that program.

  2. Michele Aavang
    Nick Chirikos
    Sue Draftkorn
    Joe Gottemoller
    Tina Hill
    Ken Koehler
    Mary McCann
    Mary McClellan
    Anna May Miller
    Robert Nowak
    Carolyn Schofield
    Paula Yensen

    This, pretty much, says it all.Seems we have a smoking gun.

  3. We sure do have a smoking gun.

    All those Board members that participated should step down.

    Essentially, the persons involved have created a ripple effect that will eventually reach our entire community in one way or another.

    The impact the decision makers have had, is far reaching and so damaging to so many lives..

    There have been many, many families impacted by those decisions..

    They should be prosecuted…

    They did not consider the serious consequences for the families who have been helped or, are currently receiving help from such a viable source of comfort for our community…

    Mchenry County politics at its finest, as demonstrated by those County Board members who helped to put all of it into motion..

    Shame on you………..

  4. The list above includes ALL board members who voted for less

    transparency. They simply don’t want you to know what’s going on.

    You might ask why they want to keep public records a secret. Why

    not phone them and ask some critical questions. See if you get an

    answer.

  5. Wait – didn’t the MHB just authorize an audit of itself?

    Will it be as critical as the TAG audit?

    How come Saint Paula hasn’t commented on this yet?

    And where are the Republicans?

    We should be making this a much bigger issue.

    We need to have some kind of Republican push on this – its a winner.

    We need to unseat those who did this.

  6. Paula Yenson and Michael Bissett, her husband, are Cowards….

    There was a political agenda behind the decisions that went on behind the scenes…….

    Talk about a self serving decision making process.

    There has to be accountability here.

  7. @Duncan Mchenry: Don’t forget about the other “silent” witches who are going to let Paula take the fall for this.

    There is much more here than meets the eye.

  8. Robert Nowak! I

    sure the hell hope this is not the same Robert Nowak that worked in the Cary Building Department.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *