Koniag subsidiaries now staff federal offices in Virginia and Oklahoma

Two subsidiaries of Koniag Inc., the Alaska Native regional corporation for Kodiak's Alutiiq shareholders, picked up federal administrative contracts this month for work happening thousands of miles from the region they belong to.

One will provide clerk support at the Indian Health Service's Oklahoma City office for $184,157 over a year, handling paperwork for the Purchased/Referred Care program. That is the system that pays for medical care Native patients receive outside IHS facilities, when it is authorized. It also carries a deadline many patients do not know about: in most cases someone who gets emergency care at an outside hospital has to notify the program within 72 hours, and missing that window can leave the patient holding the bill.

The other will provide administrative support to the audit division of the State Department's inspector general in Arlington, Virginia, for $154,464 over a year.

Neither award is unusual for these companies. The IHS contractor, Koniag Advisory and Business Solutions, holds more than two dozen other Indian Health Service contracts, none of them in Alaska, including a $1.26 million award last month to work through a backlog of patient visits still waiting to be coded and billed. IHS described clearing that backlog as essential to keeping operations running. The State Department contractor, Koniag Professional Services, already supplies writers and editors to the inspector general's front office under a $314,270 order, along with inspection support and staffing for the investigations office and its hotline.