Office of the Legislative Auditor - Financial Audit Division

Report Summary

Minnesota Veterans Home – Hastings

July 1, 1997, through June 30, 2001

Overall Conclusions:

The Minnesota Veterans Home – Hastings, adequately safeguarded and accurately reported its revenues, including resident maintenance fees, federal per diem receipts, lease and shared services receipts, resident deposits to resident accounts, gift and donation receipts, and canteen sales receipts in the accounting records. The home’s payroll expenditures were accurately reported in the accounting records. For the items tested, the home properly disbursed and recorded resident withdrawals and expenditures from resident accounts and properly used gifts and donations for designated purposes.

Key Findings:

• The home gave excessive lump sum performance based salary increases to its part-time medical director. We recommended that the home prorate lump sum salary increases based on actual hours worked.
• Prior Finding Partially Resolved: The home needs to improve controls over resident employee paychecks. We recommended that the business office independently review the resident paycheck log and undistributed paychecks.
• Prior Finding Not Resolved: The home incorrectly calculated its cost of care rate for fiscal years 2000, 2001, and 2002. The home should establish procedures to ensure that it accurately calculates annual cost of care rates.
• The home needs to improve controls over its imprest cash account. We recommended that the home reimburse its imprest cash account daily and use a single petty cash drawer from its imprest cash account for its Resident Trust Fund activities and resident activities funded by the Gift Fund account. The home should establish procedures to ensure that the imprest cash account is appropriately reimbursed by the Gift Fund account, and that the overall balance in its imprest cash account does not exceed the $20,000 authorized limit.
• Prior Finding Not Resolved: The home did not transfer all interest earned on resident trust accounts to the Gift Fund account in a timely manner. The home should transfer the interest earned of $2,528 to its Gift Fund account.

Financial Related Audit Reports address internal control weaknesses and noncompliance issues found during our audits of state departments and agencies. The scope of our work at the Minnesota Veterans Home - Hastings included: cost of care, payroll (including resident payroll), leases and shared services receipts, resident trust accounts, Gift Fund activity, canteen operations, and fixed assets.