OPEGA finds most child-care invoices paid quickly but flags process risks; OCFS vows standardization

The joint Legislative Government Oversight Committee heard on Monday that while the Department of Health and Human ServicesOffice of Child and Family Services (OCFS) pays the vast majority of child-care invoices promptly, flaws in the underlying process put providers at risk of long delays.

OPEGA Director (presenting) summarized the office's review and told the committee that in a reconciled sample of 2,198 fully paid emailed invoices from MarchtoMay 2025, 95.5% were paid within 30 calendar days of receipt, 90.1% within 14 days and 66.8% within seven days. "In spite of that performance," the director said, "the underlying process leaves much to be desired in terms of clarity, communication and consistency of application." He warned those weaknesses could produce significant payment delays "if and when matters stray off course."

The report identified two central problems: a lack of a single, documented childcare-invoice payment process across OCFS district offices and ineffective communication among key participants, including OCFS central and district offices, the Department of Administrative and Financial Services (DAFS) HHS service center, providers and resource parents. OPEGA found variation in whether offices used a single district email box or individual staff addresses to receive invoices, inconsistent invoice templates, differing rules about when a funding request must be created or reauthorized in the state's Katahdin system, and no unique invoice identifier that would make automated reconciliation straightforward.

OPEGAalso described operational and recordkeeping limits: clerical staff index invoices into DocuWare with differing fields, payments are recorded at the transaction rather than invoice level in Katahdin, and some shared inboxes lacked the ability to preserve deleted mail beyond 30 days until OCFS upgraded the accounts after OPEGA raised the issue.

OPEGA principal analyst Matt Croock described the officemethodology: staff pulled messages sent to 13 district accounts from 01/01/2024 through 06/30/2025, sampled a three-month period, and manually reconciled 2,276 emailed invoices to payment transactions. He told the committee the work required substantial manual cross-referencing because an invoice-level unique identifier was generally absent.

Committee members pressed OPEGA on causes behind an outlier district performance. OPEGA singled out District 8 (Aroostook County) as an extreme outlier in the sampled months, with just 51.8% of invoices paid within 30 days and the district accounting for 38.5% of partially or fully unpaid invoices in the sample.

OCFS Director Bobby Johnson told the committee that OCFS accepts OPEGAfindings and will work with the departmentOperational Excellence (OPEX) team to standardize the process. "We agree with this recommendation and are moving ahead in partnership with OPEX to that end," Johnson said, adding that the department plans to develop a formal standard operating procedure, an on-demand training module for staff, and a strategy to communicate clearly with providers about billing and changes in custody that affect payment responsibility.

Johnson also said staffing shortages contributed to the District 8 results: during the sampled period the district had a long-term vacancy in a case aide position and one office-assistant vacancy, which required redistributing invoice-processing duties and slowed payments. He said OCFS had already established a vendor-code direct-deposit team in November 2024 that cut average vendor-code processing from about 104 days to roughly 16 days.

Providers OPEGA interviewed suggested operational fixes including an online invoicing portal (eight of 16 interviewees), clearer advance notice when custody changes shift payment responsibility, and aligning payment timing more closely with private-pay practice where feasible. OPEGA emphasized it had not independently verified provider perceptions and described the interviews as representative but limited in size.

What happens next: the committee scheduled a public hearing on the report and OPEGA and OCFS members indicated follow-up work sessions to track OPEX progress, district-level remediations, and remaining data-tagging gaps. OPEGA recommended that OCFS document a single invoice template and the approval workflow and that OCFS coordinate with DAFS to make expectations clear around which invoice fields are required and when late fees apply.

Sources: presentation and report to the Legislative Government Oversight Committee by OPEGA staff; oral response by OCFS Director Bobby Johnson.