VA Health Care: Office of the Medical Inspector Should Strengthen Oversight of Recommendations and Assess Performance

VA’s Office of the Medical Inspector investigates concerns about the quality of health care that the VA provides to veterans, such as reports of understaffing or improper patient scheduling practices in VA facilities. Most of the cases result in recommendations.

But the office relies on one staff person to decide if recommendations have been met—which means it could close recommendations without knowing if the VA fully addressed the underlying problems. Also, the office doesn’t have performance goals that define what it expects to achieve or measures that will help assess progress towards these goals.

Our recommendations address these issues.

The Office of the Medical Inspector’s mission is to investigate...