Independent Review of VA’s Special Disabilities Capacity Report for Fiscal Year 2022

VA must submit an annual report to Congress documenting its capacity to provide specialized treatment for veterans with spinal cord injuries and disorders, traumatic brain injury, blindness, prosthetics and sensory aids, or mental health issues. Each year, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) is required to report to Congress on the accuracy of VA’s special disabilities capacity report. The OIG team identified data inaccuracies and omissions that resulted in some material errors in the fiscal year 2022 capacity report. Some of these issues persisted from the OIG’s previous reviews. As the OIG reported in its reviews of previous capacity reports, VA is unable to meet the requirement to compare its mental health capacity with 1996 levels for reasons that include changes in how treatment outcomes of veterans with mental illness are defined and tracked. The OIG continues to believe that, even if VA could compare capacity to 1996 levels, such reporting would not provide Congress with assurances that VA’s capacity is adequate to provide care to these high risk veterans. The Veterans Health Administration reported the wrong spending data for traumatic brain injury when it included obligations data at the national level rather than expenditures data at the national and network/geographic service area level. The capacity report also does not capture data on the services veterans receive through community care or the extent to which bed capacity at VA’s centers for spinal cord injuries and disorders is used. Finally, some medical facilities’ transitions to the Oracle Cerner electronic health record have affected the completeness of some facility, network, and nationally reported data elements. The OIG believes that VA should report special disability data for these facilities separately to allow Congress insight into annual trends across the facilities operating the new electronic health record.