Priority Open Recommendations: Department of Veterans Affairs

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to provide an update on the overall status of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) implementation of GAOs recommendations, and to call your continued personal attention to areas where open recommendations should be given high priority.1 In November 2018, we reported that on a government-wide basis, 77 percent of our recommendations made 4 years ago were implemented.2 VAs recommendation implementation rate was 90 percent. As of January 9, 2019, VA had 223 open recommendations. Fully implementing these open recommendations could significantly improve VAs operations. We identified 26 priority recommendations in 2018, and since April 2018, VA has implemented 5 of our 26 open priority recommendations. In doing so, VA has enhanced benefits and services for veterans readjusting to civilian life, begun holding VA medical centers accountable for assessing the competencies of its human resources staff, improved its ability to manage a major information technology (IT) project, and improved the quality of data used to make benefit decisions for veterans. As a result of these efforts, VA improved oversight and accountability, and made progress in addressing long-standing challenges with providing health care and other VA services to veterans. In addition to the 5 recommendations that VA has implemented, we closed 1 priority recommendation as unimplemented, because it was based on a program that has recently undergone significant statutory changes.VA has 20 priority recommendations remaining from those we identified in the 2018 letter. We ask your continued attention on these remaining recommendations. In total, we are adding 10 new recommendations as priorities this year related to community health care, electronic health records, physician recruitment, opioid safety, employee protections from retaliation, and burial options. This brings the total number of priority recommendations to 30. (See enclosure I for the list of these 30.)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 28, 2019
Accession Number
AD1170506

Entities

People

  • Eugene Louis Dodaro

Organizations

  • United States Government Accountability Office

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Acquisition
  • Congress
  • Data Centers
  • Department Of Defense
  • Department Of Veterans Affairs
  • Governments
  • Health
  • Health Care
  • Health Services
  • Human Resources
  • Information Systems
  • Law
  • Management Training
  • National Security
  • Procurement
  • Security
  • Standards
  • United States
  • Veterans Health

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Medical or Health Care Field.
  • Mental Health of Military Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Risk Factors, Prevalence, Symptoms, and Treatment.

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics