Federal Reports

Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021 through 2025, which articulates the vision for the FEC OIG for the next five years.

The spread of COVID-19 drastically increased the demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks, gloves, and gowns, and significantly disrupted the global supply chain. As the nation’s largest integrated healthcare system, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) had to compete for PPE for its personnel and patients. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) received hotline allegations that VHA medical facilities could not acquire and maintain enough PPE to keep pace with escalating needs. The OIG assessed how VHA reported and monitored PPE supply levels during the pandemic. The review team also solicited information about whether facilities ran out of PPE or experienced significant shortages. Without reliable PPE inventory information, VHA cannot effectively assess demand, monitor stock levels, or identify supply shortages that require prompt action.In interviews of 22 people involved in logistics operations at 42 facilities, no one reported running out of PPE items. Some individuals reported running low, but risks of outages were mitigated by shifting supplies among facilities or acquiring additional PPE in time.Overall, the OIG found VHA took swift steps to work around known limitations in its inventory management system by developing new processes and tools, to use near real-time information on PPE inventory to shift and order supplies, and to otherwise ensure its facilities would not run out of PPE. The OIG found, however, that VHA could improve the accuracy and consistency of the PPE data for reporting and monitoring.VHA concurred with the OIG’s two recommendations to provide guidance for reporting expired quantities of PPE that may still be of use, and to more effectively verify facilities’ self-reported information. Although not a formal recommendation, the OIG also called on VHA to report any data limitations until corrections can be made.

The SEC Can Further Strengthen the Tips, Complaints, and Referrals Program, Report No. 566

The SEC Has Taken Steps to Strengthen Its Monitoring of ISS Contractor’s Performance, But Additional Actions Are Needed, Report No. 565

Under the Medicare Advantage (MA) program, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) makes monthly payments to MA organizations according to a system of risk adjustment that depends on the health status of each enrollee. Accordingly, MA organizations are paid more for providing benefits to enrollees with diagnoses associated with more intensive use of health care resources than to healthier enrollees, who would be expected to require fewer health care resources.To determine the health status of enrollees, CMS relies on MA organizations to collect diagnosis codes from their providers and submit these codes to CMS. Some diagnoses are at higher risk for being miscoded, which may result in overpayments from CMS.For this audit, we reviewed one MA organization, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM), and focused on seven groups of high-risk diagnosis codes. Our objective was to determine whether selected diagnosis codes that BCBSM submitted to CMS for use in CMS's risk adjustment program complied with Federal requirements.

We investigated allegations that a tribal non-profit organization misused $50,000 it received for a 3-day training conference. It received the funds from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) through a cooperative agreement.We did not find any evidence of misuse of funds or of false claims and determined the organization used the full amount of the cooperative agreement to cover costs associated with the training conference.