Better management strategies and data would strengthen efforts to prevent and address improper federal workers’ compensation payments, GAO has said.
In fiscal 2006, the FECA program – managed by the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs — paid out over $1.8 billion to federal employees unable to work after being injured on the job, but it has not established an effective strategy for managing improper payments, according to GAO-08-284.
After reviewing OWCP documents and analyzing its data, reviewing a random sample of FECA claims, visiting five OWCP district offices, and interviewing OWCP headquarters and district officials, GAO said the agency does not sufficiently emphasize preventing, detecting, and recovering improper payments.
It said none of the performance goals for the program addresses improper payments, and that OWCP does not collect the information it needs to accurately assess the FECA program’s risk of improper payments, such as information on their magnitude and causes.
For example, OWCP relies on unverified, self-reported information from claimants that is not always timely or correct.
GAO found that many overpayments occurred because claimants did not inform OWCP promptly when they returned to work, something OWCP can’t really monitor because it generally does not require claimant’s self-reported earnings to be verified and does not systemically match FECA claims data with data from other agencies – it also lacks legal authority to access such data.
Overpayments and underpayments both were caused by OWCP errors and many overpayments occurred when OWCP’s payment-processing deadlines prevented payments from being quickly canceled when claimants returned to work or died, GAO said.
It said OWCP does not ensure that overpayments are collected in a timely manner and misses some opportunities for recovering overpayments, such as deducting them from claimants’ subsequent FECA payments.
