B is for Business made the following comment on my previous post "I wonder why anyone would think it's acceptable to co-mingle personal funds with the county operational fund. It sounds like we need an experienced auditor to implement some common sense financial controls. : )"
Well, not only was the decision to co-mingle the personal funds of the Champaign County Nursing Home with the County's Operational Fund completely lacking in common sense but it is also illegal. (See the Below excerpt from the Nursing Home Care Act. ) The complaint that I uploaded to http://www.davidcearlock.com/champaign/Champaign%20031507.pdf clearly shows that the Champaign County Nursing Home was in violation of this law as recently as March 2007. I have emailed (ccnh@co.champaign.il.us) the nursing home and inquired as to what steps they have taken to bring them into compliance with the law regarding this issue and I have yet to receive a response.
++UPDATE++
I just received a response less than an hour ago. Andrew Buffenbarger, stated in his reply that and I quote "Resident funds are safe and secure in the Resident Trust Fund. I am happy to report the inspectors found that every penny of resident funds was accounted for. We simply had to change our practice in how we recognized those funds separately from County general funds, get a software upgrade so the statements showed each transaction, and be more diligent in the frequency of our trust fund reconciliations."
I am pleased that the County Nursing Home took action on this matter and is now in compliance with the law. However, this is just one of many issues that need discussion.
(210 ILCS 45/) Nursing Home Care Act.
PART 2. RESPONSIBILITIES
(6) Shall keep any funds received from a resident for safekeeping in an account separate from the facility's funds, and shall at no time withdraw any part or all of such funds for any purpose other than to return the funds to the resident upon the request of the resident or any other person entitled to make such request, to pay the resident his allowance, or to make any other payment authorized by the resident or any other person entitled to make such authorization.
(7) Shall deposit any funds received from a resident in excess of $100 in an interest bearing account insured by agencies of, or corporations chartered by, the State or federal government. The account shall be in a form which clearly indicates that the facility has only a fiduciary interest in the funds and any interest from the account shall accrue to the resident. The facility may keep up to $100 of a resident's money in a non‑interest bearing account or petty cash fund, to be readily available for the resident's current expenditures.
It looks like (6) is covered by the trust fund. I would suspect (7) is covered by the new software, so long as the interest for each person's account gets allocated to them.
The auditor might want to consider reviewing all the financial process flows for the entire organization so we don't have to rely on legal inspections to catch problems. Maybe he can apply his expertise and have a random audit of county financial flows looking for opportunities to improve cash controls. We know he's on top of things: http://www.illinipundit.com/2007/08/07/no-more-free-lunches.