Audit  Audit of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services—Barriers to Access to Public Benefits

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) has conducted a performance audit of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) for the period July 1, 2015 through December 31, 2017. This audit was initiated based on concerns brought to OSA’s attention by various groups regarding how the Commonwealth’s human-service agencies administer the application process for public benefits. This audit was designed to determine whether there are any barriers deterring or preventing people who are eligible to receive public benefits from accessing those benefits.

In 2004, EOHHS established an Internet portal called the Virtual Gateway (VG) that was designed to provide EOHHS agencies, state-contracted service providers and other community-based organizations, and the general public with online access to health and human-service information, including information about public benefits. The VG was also intended to streamline and standardize the application, eligibility determination, and referral processes for public benefits for consumers. At the time we began our audit work, one system within the VG, called Eos, was used to process applications for public benefits.¹ This system was used by the state’s Department of Public Health (DPH) to enroll participants in the federally funded Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Therefore, our audit work focused on DPH’s administration of WIC and the identification of barriers inhibiting eligible persons from receiving WIC benefits.

The objectives of this audit were to determine whether there were any barriers affecting eligible persons’ ability to access WIC benefits and whether various state agencies—including the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA), the Office of Medicaid, and DPH—were sharing information to identify and notify people who were eligible but had not applied for WIC benefits.

Below is a summary of our findings and recommendations, with links to each page listed.

A PDF copy of the audit of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services - Barriers to Access Public Benefit is available here.

1.   At the beginning of our audit work, the Department of Transitional Assistance was using a system within the VG, called Common Intake, to enroll consumers in multiple services, but that system was decommissioned in April 2018.