Contractors working for the State of Illinois took a 470,000-hour paid lunch break on taxpayers’ dime.
A company hired during the Covid-19 pandemic to fill staffing shortages at hospitals and long-term care facilities spent more than a third of its time on “standdown,” a contract provision that paid them to be on-site and available in case they were needed.
The contractor, Favorite Healthcare Staffing, was supposed to notify the state any time its employees were on standdown for more than 24 hours. There was no evidence those notifications occurred, and the state only conducted limited oversight, according to an Aug. 11 report from Auditor General Christopher Meister.
Key facts: Favorite Healthcare earned $220.3 million from Illinois from 2022 to 2023, including $78.5 million for standdown hours.
The audit found 270 employees who billed for standdown time without actually working a single hour in two years. They earned $7.5 million.
At least eight employees even billed overtime at rates of up to $330 per hour during weeks they were on standdown for five consecutive days, according to the audit. One employee billed for overtime while he was in quarantine and not working.
Other employees billed more than 24 hours in a single day. The state paid their invoices without flagging the discrepancy, the audit found,
Favorite Healthcare was reimbursed $1.4 million for lodging costs, even though its employees were staying in their personal residences.
Upon discovering the issues, Illinois hired the consulting firm Innovative Emergency Management to review Favorite Healthcare’s invoices.
But Innovative Emergency Management also had its own billing issues, the audit found. The company billed Illinois using duplicate timesheets and for employees who did not report working any hours.
Illinois later had to hire yet another firm, Crowe, to review Innovative Emergency Management’s invoices. Crowe earned $1.3 million.
Summary: The public should not have to pay contractors to sit around and twiddle their thumbs, nor pay consultants to figure out why.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
