Federal Reports

During the course of the audit, we determined that FEMA provided hotel rooms to about 90,000 households (nearly 227,000 survivors) after the 2017 California wildfires and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. However, FEMA did not oversee and manage the Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program to ensure it operated efficiently and effectively to meet all disaster survivors’ needs. Specifically, FEMA officials did not accurately validate taxes charged for hotel rooms and did not ensure that CLC maintained accurate records to ensure taxes charged were reasonable and allocable; paid for unoccupied rooms; and did not transition survivors from TSA hotels to interim or permanent housing timely. This occurred because FEMA officials did not establish a dedicated program office with staff and standard operating procedures for the TSA program. These deficiencies hindered FEMA from conducting appropriate reviews of the hotel costs and payments, and from adequately coordinating with the states to prepare pre-disaster housing strategies. As a result, FEMA paid more than $55.8 million in unverified taxes, disbursed indeterminate amounts for unoccupied rooms, and left over 146,000 disaster survivors in hotels for more than the recommended 30 days. We made two recommendations that when implemented, will improve FEMA’s oversight and pre-disaster planning of transitional sheltering. FEMA concurred with both recommendations and the recommendations are resolved and open.

This audit assessed the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) oversight of the issuance of prosthetic supplies and devices to veterans. VA’s Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Service (PSAS) is the world’s largest provider of prosthetic devices and sensory aids. Prosthetics include not only artificial limbs, but any device that supports or replaces a body part or function such as wheelchairs and pacemakers. Sensory aids include hearing aids, optical prescriptions, low vision and mobility aids, or speech and communication aids. The cost of PSAS services increased from over $2.9 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2016 to nearly $3.5 billion in FY 2019.The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) found weaknesses in VHA oversight contributed to PSAS staff cloning (copying) consults improperly that also affected its ability to track fulfillment times. Consequently, VHA improperly issued an estimated $15.8 million in prosthetic supplies in 2017. However, 94 percent of transactions related to deceased veterans were proper. The remaining 6 percent were improper, but the OIG did not identify evidence of fraud with respect to these errors. VHA also maintained adequate oversight of duplicate supply issuance.The OIG made four recommendations with which VHA concurred to improve oversight of the clone consult function. Specifically, the OIG called on VHA to ensure PSAS business practice guidelines include requirements for conducting and documenting reviews of cloned and pending consults; staff develop a process to verify that consults include accessory and consumable supplies for prosthetic items before issuance; establishes field consistency requirements for program reviews and evaluations, and complies with existing policy for reviewing program assessments and evaluations, and communicate the results to the regional prosthetic representatives.