Federal Reports

In fiscal year (FY) 2020, the Postal Service used about 255,000 delivery vehicles to distribute mail to 160 million delivery points across the nation. While about $292 million was spent on vehicle parts through 16 suppliers, the Postal Service spent about $190 million (65 percent) with two primary consignment vehicle part suppliers.These suppliers are contracted through national ordering agreements for the sale of vehicle parts through consignment with a period of performance from 2007 to 2050. The agreements also include a most favored customer pricing clause which allows the Postal Service to obtain an equal to or lower unit price for vehicle parts provided to the suppliers’ other customers.Our objective was to assess if the management of Postal Service vehicle parts agreements is consistent with pricing requirements.

Our objective for this report was to assess the effectiveness of the company’s efforts to achieve compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.We found that the company has clearer lines of authority, responsibility, and accountability for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) program, and that its reorganization, based on our prior recommendations, has helped it bring 36 more stations into compliance since October 2017 through April 2021. The company cannot, however, reasonably expect to execute its aggressive plan to achieve compliance at the remaining 312 stations over the next six years until it develops the requisite planning to achieve its timeline. Although the company appears fully committed to achieving ADA compliance, it acknowledges that it currently does not have enough staff to manage additional projects or monitor the contractors it hired to support them. We also found that achieving cooperation with third parties at the remaining noncompliant stations remains a significant program risk. Finally, we found that Amtrak’s Information Technology department and its ADA Stations team did not coordinate to ensure that passenger information display systems (PIDS) installations were compliant, and they did not effectively coordinate to ensure that they were tracking the same number of stations at which the company is responsible for PIDS, which led to inconsistent reporting.We recommended that the company 1) assess the current and future resources the ADA program needs to implement its timeline, including resources from other groups, and identify actions to address any shortfalls, 2) ensure it reviews contractor timesheets and invoices more thoroughly, reconcile contractor timesheets and invoices from fiscal year 2015 through fiscal year 2020, and, if applicable, recover any costs, 3) develop guidance that institutionalizes steps program staff can take when they reach a stalemate with a third party, and 4) take and document actions to ensure the ADA Stations team and Information Technology department are coordinating so installations are compliant and reporting is consistent and accurate. 

An Amtrak passenger conductor based in Florence, South Carolina, was terminated from employment on September 2, 2021, following his administrative hearing. Our investigation found that the former employee violated company policy by engaging in outside employment while on a medical leave of absence from the company and by being dishonest on his pre-employment physical exam form when responding to questions regarding previous injuries and hospitalizations.

The United States currently faces a nationwide public health emergency because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal regulations, effective May 8, 2020, required nursing homes to report COVID-19 information, such as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases among residents, at least weekly to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Healthcare Safety Network. Each week, CDC aggregates the reported information and sends the data to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for posting to the CMS website. These data are used to assist with national surveillance of COVID-19 in nursing homes and to support actions to protect the health and safety of nursing home residents. Our objective was to determine whether CMS’s COVID-19 data for nursing homes were complete and accurate.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected millions of Americans, resulting in more than 600,000 deaths. Medicare beneficiaries have been particularly affected and remain vulnerable to new variants and additional surges of the virus. Clinicians and researchers are still working to fully understand the damage to the body from the disease and what underlying chronic conditions potentially lead to more severe complications or hospitalization.Understanding the types of conditions for which Medicare beneficiaries with COVID-19 are being treated and who was more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 can help hospitals and health officials better prepare for and address the wide-ranging and extensive needs of COVID 19 patients, particularly in the event of localized surges of cases. Such knowledge will also assist in the Federal, State, and local response to the pandemic by providing a better picture of the needs of these hospitalized beneficiaries.This report describes the complex care needs of beneficiaries hospitalized with COVID-19. It focuses on surges in COVID-19 hospitalizations in six localities and builds upon prior OIG work that describes the extent to which hospitals have been strained by COVID-19. As we noted in the 2021 report about hospital experiences during the pandemic, hospitals have been operating in "survival mode" for an extended period of time. They have also experienced difficulty balancing the complex and resource-intensive care needed for COVID-19 patients with efforts to resume routine hospital care.