Administration of Hill-Burton Assurances and Loan Assistance Program Needs To Be Improved

GAO summarized the informal recommendations which were made to program officials during a recent review of the administration of the Hill-Burton Program by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

GAO felt that HHS Bureau of Health Facilities (BHF) should formally dismiss uncompensated care complaints on file for over 12 months to reduce the large backlog of complaints and allow individuals to pursue legal action promptly. In the future, BHF should formally dismiss complaints not resolved within 6 months. BHF should develop systematic followup procedures to ensure that facilities correct violations noted during complaint investigations and compliance assessments. BHF should obtain uncompensated care compliance information from the hundreds of facilities which are scheduled to reach the end of their 20-year obligation to determine why they have not requested closeout assessments and whether they have reached their compliance levels. BHF and the Office of Civil Rights should also develop procedures for routinely sharing pertinent reports and data relating to compliance assessments and complaint investigations. BHF should focus on verifying the Loan Early Warning System's database and collecting other necessary data. BHF should arrange to systematically receive information on facility ownership changes as it becomes available, finalize its draft title VI waiver/recovery manual, and develop regulations for title XVI waiver and recovery actions to implement the legislation.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Franklin A. Curtis Team: General Accounting Office: Human Resources Division Phone: (202) 275-5451