BATON ROUGE- A state legislative audit shows the state health agency failed to properly oversee an $18 million a year program that provides non-emergency medical transportation to Medicaid recipients.
    
The audit, released Monday, marked the seventh time the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals received audit findings that could result in improper payments because of lax oversight.
    
The program provides Medicaid recipients with transportation to and from doctors' office, out-patients clinics and the like. The performance audit found little to no monitoring to insure the rides were medically necessary or even occurred at all in the program, which has been cited as prime for abuse and resulted in people being jailed.