OIG Is VA’s Watchdog

Since 2012, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Veterans Affairs has saved us $1.4 billion. They do this by showing up unannounced to do inspections, audits, reviews, assessments or investigations. They scrutinize paperwork, conduct interviews and get to the bottom of what’s going on.

The recent inspection of a facility estimated that the VA was about to spend $261 million over the next five years on sleep apnea devices that veterans weren’t using. Veterans were given the devices and only half were being used, with no staff follow-up. The OIG recommendation was to loan the devices to veterans instead and keep track of the usage. This move is expected to save $39 million per year for the sleep apnea devices and $12 million per year for the supplies.

The VA has been spending $450 million, split between four vendors, on contracts for medical and surgical supplies on the East coast. Because supplies of this nature must be delivered on time every time, the OIG dug around to see if anybody in the VA was keeping an eye on what was being delivered. In addition, the supplier was to report monthly about the order fulfillment levels. So what did the OIG discover: that nobody in VA was watching and the vendors were using funny math to report their deliveries. Correct orders only were received 40% of the time. This calculated to $16.8 million in incorrect payments made to vendors in one year.

The OIG also looked at undelivered orders in a different investigation. Specifically, had prices changed between ordering and the delivery? Were the items still needed? Should the orders be canceled? Could the money be spent elsewhere? If budgeted money isn’t spent in a fiscal year, it gets erased and vanishes. OIG discovered that $132 million could have been spent elsewhere had anyone been paying attention to undelivered orders.

I still say, whatever the OIG’s budget is, double it. We’ll still come out ahead.