Los Angeles County's Efforts to Account for the Use of Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program Funds and Monitoring of Subrecipients

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The objectives of this review were to determine whether the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (LA County):  (i) properly recorded, summarized and reported bioterrorism preparedness transactions in accordance with the terms and conditions of the cooperative agreement, (ii) established controls and procedures to monitor subrecipient expenditures of Health Resources and Services Administration funds; and (iii) used Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program (Program) funds to supplant funds previously provided by other sources.  We determined that LA County:  (i) generally accounted for Program funds in accordance with the terms and conditions of the cooperative agreement and applicable departmental regulations and guidelines, (ii) had not started to monitor subrecipient activities or made any site visits because the hospital agreements had been in place only a few months; and (iii) had not used Program funding to supplant existing State or local funds.  We recommended that LA County implement the monitoring procedures as planned.  LA County concurred with the conclusions of our report.