Health department receives 2024 audit
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ALPENA -- District Health Department No. 4 received the results of its 2024 audit on Sept. 15. The auditor's opinion was that the department had fairly presented its financial statements though there were material weaknesses reported.
The auditor determined that DHD4 was not a low-risk auditee.
The audit was completed by Maner Costerisan, an accounting firm based in Lansing.
According to Michelle Konwinski, the current DHD4 finance director, audits are typically done for the year prior. However, 2024 was delayed due to reporting errors from the previous leadership team.
Konwinski was brought on as finance director in July 2025.
Konwinski explained that when she took her job in 2025, the medicaid reimbursement reports for FY 2022, FY 2023, and FY 2024 were past due. She said that she is not privy as to why that was the case.
“All I know is that when I accepted this position those reports were delinquent,” she said in July.
To move forward with the 2024 audit, Konwinski had to bring the department up to date with its medicaid reports.
The first material weakness reported by the auditor for the 2024 audit was regarding internal control over financial reporting. According to the audit report, the misstatements were not detected by the department’s internal control "over financial reporting."
The auditor reported that the accounting records were initially misstated and "necessary adjustments were brought to the attention of management and were subsequently recorded."
The auditor recommended to the department to make sure adjustments "are not necessary at the time future audit analysis is performed."
The second material weakness was that accounts "were not reconciled to supporting records in a timely manner," for accounts such as amounts due from other governmental units, VFC vaccine inventory, accrued liabilities, unearned revenues, et cetera.
According to the auditor, without timely reconciliations, "there is an increased risk of misstatement or errors that might go undetected as well as a delay in accurate financial reporting."
The recommendations to DHD4 was that balance sheet accounts should be "reconciled in a timely manner and agreed to underlying transaction detail or third-party supporting documentation by the appropriate level of management."
A third "material weakness" was found in "Internal Control Over Compliance (Reporting)." This specifically referred to Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases.
According to the audit report, the department did not "adequately allocate costs between programs within its general ledger or otherwise maintain documentation in a manner that would allow them to generate reports documenting costs associated with each program and support the amounts that were reported on the financial status reports."
The result is that the department was unable to prove the amounts as "eligible costs" reported to the state.
A "significant deficiency" was found in the separation of duties at the department. The auditor report stated that the department "may not have adequate separation of duties."
The audit report specified that the finance director was "responsible for preparing and posting journal entries, however there was no indication that the journal entries were reviewed. We also noted that one individual was responsible for cash receipting, deposits, and bank reconciliations."
According to the auditor, this deficiency caused "inadequate oversight and review procedures over journal entries and cash receipting/reconciling process."
The risk of this deficiency is that misappropriation can occur.
The auditor recommended that the department should review "user duties to ensure adequate separation of duties over transaction cycles" and that journal entries are reviewed by an appropriate member of management for accuracy and reasonableness."
Dane M. Porter from Maner Costerisan presented the audit. He said that since the change in leadership the recommendations made in the audit have likely already been resolved.
"A lot of these conditions may very well have been resolved, previously," Porter said.
He said that the 2025 audit may show if those conditions had been resolved, though the leadership and administration had changed late into the year.
Kayla Wikaryasz can be reached at 989-358-5688 or kwikaryasz@TheAlpenaNews.com.