Are you on top of inventory, records-retention and expense reports? You’re way ahead of the curve.

Operating under the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Indian Health Service provides medical care to 1.9 million people, most of whom are Eskimos or in federally-recognized American Indian tribes. Thanks to a whistle-blower’s call to a government hotline a year ago, investigators have turned up some shady business practices at  Service.

After an audit of property records, about 5,000 items are reported stolen or missing, worth roughly $15.8 million.

Health Service officials say the findings aren’t justified — most of the items were only “temporarily misplaced,” and some discarded equipment was outdated.

Government Accountability Office (GAO) officials didn’t buy it. Included on their list of “egregious” errors:

• $700,000 of IT equipment was found damaged — mostly by bat dung — in a storage room
• a yard sale by several employees resulted in 17 computers being given away for free
• one stolen desktop (not bad) that contained a database with personal details of 849 miners (not good),
• fake purchasing documents used to deter auditors, and
• a missing set of “jaws of life” equipment.

The missing equipment is bad news for an already-shorthanded tribal community, claim GAO officials.

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Tags: GAO, Indian Health Service, Jaws of life