Federal Reports

Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) claims include Resource Utilization Groups (RUGs) that identify whether a beneficiary received therapy and the range of therapy minutes provided. For example, SNF claims with a RUG that begins with "RU" or "RV" indicate that an ultra high or very high level of therapy was provided and that during a 7 day period, the beneficiary received 720 minutes or more, or 500 to 719 minutes of therapy, respectively. The higher the volume of therapy services provided, the higher the Medicare payment.

Las mejoras en los esfuerzos de divulgación de la justicia ambiental durante las emergencias podrían mejorar la protección de la salud pública de las comunidades afectadas por huracanes u otro tipo de desastres.

This report details KPMG’s findings of its audit of financial statements from the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) for fiscal years 2019 and 2018. The OST financial reports contain financial statements and notes for Tribal and Other Trust Funds (Tribal) and Individual Indian Monies Trust Funds (IIM).KPMG issued a qualified opinion, consistent with prior years, on the Tribal financial statements because it was unable to satisfy itself as to the fairness of trust fund balances. KPMG issued an unmodified opinion on the IIM financial statements.

Audit of the Federal Trade Commission’s Compliance with the DATA Act

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) contracted with the independent public accounting firm CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA) to audit VA’s compliance under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) for the first quarter of fiscal year 2019. The DATA Act requires the inspector general of each federal agency to review a statistically valid sample of the spending data submitted for publication on the website USASpending.gov. Each inspector general must then submit a publicly available report to Congress with an assessment of the completeness, timeliness, quality, and accuracy of the data sampled, along with the implementation and use of government-wide financial data standards. This is the second of three required biennial reports in accordance with the schedule recommended by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. CLA reported that VA’s existing financial management and related systems have limited functionality to fully support the reporting standards and requirements under the DATA Act. Also, data management and reporting processes need improvement to ensure compliance with those requirements. As a result of these challenges, CLA reported that VA did not fully meet the reporting standards and attributes of completeness, timeliness, quality, and accuracy. Recommendations from CLA include that VA continue system modernization efforts and improve internal controls over certain aspects of the data-submission process. Overall, CLA made 16 recommendations for improving compliance under the DATA Act. VA’s response to CLA’s draft report indicated concurrence with all recommendations, and planned corrective actions are responsive. CLA is responsible for the attached report dated November 4, 2019, including its conclusions and recommendations. The OIG does not express an opinion on VA’s compliance.