Federal Reports

The Office of Inspector General examined the completeness, timeliness, quality, and accuracy of NASA’s financial and award data as required under the DATA Act.

This Comprehensive Healthcare Inspection Program (CHIP) provides a focused evaluation of the quality of care delivered at the Fargo VA Health Care System. The inspection covers leadership and organizational risks and key clinical and administrative processes associated with promoting quality care. For this inspection, the areas of focus were Quality, Safety, and Value; Medical Staff Privileging; Environment of Care; Medication Management: Controlled Substances Inspections; Mental Health: Military Sexual Trauma Follow-Up and Staff Training; Geriatric Care: Antidepressant Use among the Elderly; Women’s Health: Abnormal Cervical Pathology Results Notification and Follow-Up; and High-Risk Processes: Emergency Department and Urgent Care Center Operations. The facility’s executive leadership team appeared relatively stable with all four positions permanently filled for longer than one year prior to the OIG’s visit. For selected employee and patient experience survey scores, the OIG noted that employees and patients were generally satisfied. The facility leaders appeared actively engaged and were working to sustain and further improve employee and patient engagement and satisfaction. The OIG’s review of the facility’s accreditation findings, sentinel events, disclosures, and patient safety indicator data did not identify any substantial organizational risk factors. The leaders were knowledgeable about selected Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning (SAIL) and community living center (CLC) metrics but should continue to take actions to sustain and improve performance of measures contributing to the SAIL “4-star” and CLC “2-star” quality ratings, respectively. The OIG issued five recommendations for improvement: (1) Quality, Safety, and Value • Interdisciplinary review of utilization management data (2) Medical Staff Privileging • Use of ongoing professional practice evaluations for reprivileging decisions (3) Mental Health: Military Sexual Trauma Follow-up and Staff Training • Military sexual trauma training (4) High-risk Processes: Emergency Departments and Urgent Care Center Operations • Emergency department registered nurse staffing • Backup call schedule for emergency department providers

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) contracted with ATC Group Services LLC (ATC) to conduct a review of groundwater monitoring activities at Shawnee Fossil Plant to determine the quality of the program and adherence to regulatory standards. ATC stated that in their opinion, monitoring activities performed at Shawnee Fossil Plant are in adherence with guidelines for the Environmental Protection Agency. Furthermore, ATC stated the work performed appears to be of high quality and does not likely result in any discrepancies for the program. However, ATC identified an omission from a plan that did not impact groundwater monitoring. TVA management completed actions to address the omission.

Audit of the Controls on the DATA Act FY2019 First Quarter Submission

Audit of FY2019 First Quarter Data Submitted Under the DATA Act

Postal Service transportation costs have increased $1.7 billion (or about 25 percent) since fiscal year (FY) 2014 despite an overall decline in mail volume of 8.8 billion pieces (or about 6 percent), as well as several initiatives to reduce transportation costs. Our objective was to analyze practices and cost trends and identify risk areas within the Postal Service’s transportation network.