Overview
In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor has conducted a performance audit of certain activities of the Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) for the period January 1, 2019 through November 30, 2020.
We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.
Below is our audit objective, indicating the question we intended our audit to answer, the conclusion we reached regarding the objective, and where the objective is discussed in this report.
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Objective |
Conclusion |
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Does CHIA maintain information that is updated at least annually on its consumer healthcare information website, CompareCare, as required by Sections 20(a) and (b) of Chapter 12C of the General Laws? |
No; see Finding 1 |
To achieve our audit objective, we gained an understanding of the internal control environment related to the objective by reviewing the applicable CHIA policies and procedures, interviewing CHIA management, and observing the information and data available on CompareCare.
In addition, we performed the following procedures to obtain sufficient, appropriate audit evidence to address the audit objective.
Methodology
To determine whether CHIA maintained information that was updated at least annually on CompareCare, we interviewed CHIA officials and personnel who were responsible for oversight of the website. Further, we obtained and reviewed screenshots of various sections of CompareCare and determined when the information was last updated. We also conducted observations of the information on the website to determine when the information was last updated, as well as whether the information met all of the requirements of Sections 20(a) and (b) of Chapter 12C of the General Laws. Finally, we obtained and reviewed documentation from CHIA officials regarding presentations they provided to stakeholders on the development, timeline, and prelaunch of CompareCare, as well as a memorandum regarding the Health Information and Analysis Oversight Council.
| Date published: | December 31, 2021 |
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