The Answers to the Final Five Questions on the Last Blog with One More Question added:

6. We could not file a dispute with the North Dakota government or WSI, as the dispute had to be filed BEFORE the end of the bidding. We would have filed a dispute for the small number of files that the provider examined in their review vs. cost, but the number of files reviewed were not published until AFTER the audit was completed.

7. A recent North Carolina public bid for a file review of 350 files had a range of $27,000 to $65,000. So with 475 files, that would be 475/350 * 65,000 = $88,214 maximum.

8. Yes, we are familiar with the audit provider. They are one of the larger companies that bid on quite a number of projects.

9. We know no one at the WSI or within the North Dakota state government.

10. Yes, we do realize that we were posted on some of the politically-based websites in North Dakota. We made no effort to contact anyone with the North Dakota press. We have heard from a few news outlets and have been interviewed on the blog postings.

11. This is another question that we just added - Did I review the report from the provider on WSI's website? What was my opinion of the report?

The report was well done from a structure standpoint. However, the numbers are not there to draw any conclusions. One area that was remarkable was that the provider's team could have performed an audit on 475 files from 1/28/08 through 2/1/08. That is five workdays or 37.5 hours. The norm is one file per hour on the average. Lost-time files may take longer than one hour to review, but medical-benefit-only files brings the average back to within an hour. That would be 12.67 files per hour. The review team would have needed to consist of 13 auditors at a minimum to accomplish this task that quickly.