Federal Reports

The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA) directly affects both the Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid. Under CHIPRA, Congress appropriated $3.225 billion for qualifying States to receive bonus payments to offset the costs of increased enrollment of children in Medicaid.

The OIG used data analytics to identify offices with a surge of potentially fraudulent Voyager credit card activity. We identified 128 potentially fraudulent fuel transactions totaling $7,199, made primarily in Florida with a Voyager card assigned to the Southeast (SE) Austin Station, between January 1 and July 31, 2017.

This year, we highlighted the underlying causes of the Department's persistent management and performance challenges, which hamper efforts to accomplish the homeland security mission efficiently and effectively. The challenges are two-fold. First, Department leadership must commit itself to ensuring DHS operates more as a single entity rather than a collection of components. The lack of progress in reinforcing a unity of effort translates to a missed opportunity for greater effectiveness. Second, Department leadership must establish and enforce a strong internal control environment typical of a more mature organization. The current environment of relatively weak internal controls affects all aspects of the Department’s mission, from border protection to immigration enforcement and from protection against terrorist attacks and natural disasters to cybersecurity.

OIG conducted an inspection in response to Senator James Inhofe’s request to evaluate clinical, supervisory, and administrative practices at the Oklahoma City VA Health Care System (System), Oklahoma City, OK. We also evaluated the System Director’s concerns and coordinated parts of this review with The Joint Commission. Our comprehensive review identified multiple program areas, processes, and operations needing improvement. The root cause for many of these issues was poor and unstable leadership at a number of levels, most notably in the Director position. Without strong and effective leadership, an inattentive and apathetic organizational culture evolved that allowed problems to arise and persist. It was only after new leadership was installed in May 2016 that the culture improved and necessary changes took place. We made 24 recommendations.