Dr. John D. Daigh, Jr., AIG for Healthcare Inspections, accompanied by Mr. Gary K. Abe, Deputy AIG for Audits and Evaluations, testified before the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, United States Senate, to discuss OIG’s health care reviews and audits of programs and performance of the Veterans’ Health Administration (VHA).
Dr. Daigh testified that VHA is at risk of not performing its chief mission to deliver high quality health care as the result of several intersecting factors: 1) VHA has several missions, and too often management decisions compromise the most important mission of providing veterans with quality health care; 2) leadership has too often compromised national VHA standards to meet short term goals; 3) the Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISN) do not consistently support local VA Medical Centers to encourage success and proactively address areas of risk; 4) resource management data gaps make the cost-effective delivery of a national benefit challenging, and 5) VHA’s internal processes are inefficient and make the conduct of routine business unnecessarily burdensome. Dr. Daigh reported that the issues confronting VHA are issues that OIG has long reported as serious and in need of attention at the VA Central Office, at the VISN, and at the facility levels, and that OIG will continue to do so until we see that lasting change has occurred.