Federal Reports

NASA’s plan to land humans on the Moon by the end of 2025 and send a crewed mission to Mars in the 2030s rest in part on significant participation and partnerships with international space agencies and their long-term commitments to the Artemis campaign. In this audit, we examined NASA’s efforts to partner with other space agencies on Artemis missions.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) assessed allegations at the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center (facility) that a newly trained interventional cardiologist was hired despite poor training and references. Further allegations claimed that the interventional cardiologist provided poor quality of care to patients and that facility leaders did not respond to staff concerns regarding this provider.The OIG did not substantiate that the interventional cardiologist was hired despite poor training and references, but identified deficiencies in the processes used to credential, privilege, and evaluate performance of the interventional cardiologist. Inexperienced staff used a third-party wage verification form instead of the required verification directly from the school or program director to verify completion of an interventional cardiology fellowship training program.The OIG did not substantiate that the interventional cardiologist provided poor quality of care to patients that resulted in adverse clinical outcomes. Despite staff complaints of clinical concerns related to the interventional cardiologist, none identified instances of adverse clinical outcomes related to poor patient care.The OIG did not substantiate that facility leaders failed to act on staff members’ concerns about the interventional cardiologist’s practice. As a result of multiple concerns shared with facility leaders by cardiology nursing staff, the interventional cardiologist’s cardiac catheterization laboratory privileges were suspended and a factfinding investigation was initiated. The OIG found that actions taken were not done timely.While not an allegation, the OIG determined that the volume of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures performed at the facility was not sufficient to maintain interventional cardiologists’ competence and patient safety.Five recommendations were addressed to the Facility Director related to credentialing and privileging, mentoring newly trained interventional cardiologists, focused professional practice evaluations, factfinding investigations, and PCI procedure volume.

Florida residents Jean Barbier and Bryan DeCastro pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on January 10, 2023, and January 17, 2023, respectively, in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida. Both defendants were employed by a company contracted by Amtrak to provide food services. Our investigation found that DeCastro fraudulently altered the timecards of Barbier and another individual to make it appear they worked more hours than they did, resulting in payment for hours they did not work. Barbier then paid DeCastro kickbacks for falsely inflating the timecards. Both defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on a future date.

Our objective was to determine whether the University of Cincinnati (University) used the Student Aid (Assistance Listing Number (ALN) 84.425E) and Institutional (ALN 84.425F) portions of its Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) funds for allowable and intended purposes.The University spent $109.9 million (83 percent) of its total HEERF allocation of $132.8 million as of September 30, 2021. The University generally used the Student Aid ($42.1 million) and Institutional ($67.8 million) portions of its HEERF grant funds for allowable and intended purposes but needs to strengthen its review and documentation processes for its use of Student Aid grant funds and certain other processes to ensure compliance for its use of Institutional grant funds. We also found that the University did not fully comply with cash management and reporting requirements.

What We Looked AtTunnels are important parts of the Nation’s highway infrastructure. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)—the Agency responsible for overseeing tunnels—an average of 15 million vehicles a day travel through more than 500 tunnels on public roads across the country. The majority of these tunnels have exceeded their designed service lives, and timely and reliable inspections help detect safety problems and prevent failures. The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act of 2012 (MAP-21) required FHWA to implement a tunnel safety program. Given the importance of FHWA’s role in tunnel safety, we conducted this audit to assess the Agency’s progress in implementing its tunnel safety program. Specifically, we focused on FHWA’s (1) maintenance of a national tunnel inventory, (2) compliance review process, and (3) monitoring of critical risks to tunnel safety.What We FoundFHWA has made progress implementing a comprehensive tunnel safety program as required by MAP-21 by establishing a national tunnel inventory, inspection standards, training for tunnel inspectors, and annual compliance reviews. However, we found that FHWA’s national tunnel inventory is incomplete because the Agency has not provided clear guidance to its Divisions and the State DOTs on how to classify some types of structures as tunnels and verify that they have inventoried all tunnels. Inaccurate and unreliable data also persist in the inventory due to inadequate data processing procedures that do not flag errors or require corrections. In addition, some internal controls for FHWA’s tunnel safety compliance review process are ineffective, resulting in compliance determinations that do not reflect the severity of deficiencies or adhere to the Agency’s review criteria. Lastly, FHWA has created an internal database to monitor critical tunnel safety risks, but the database lacks a clear scope and detailed guidance to help ensure that Division staff input complete and accurate data.Our RecommendationsWe made 12 recommendations to help FHWA improve the implementation of its tunnel safety program. FHWA concurred with seven recommendations and partially concurred with the other five. In response, we requested that FHWA clarify and reconsider its actions.