#MiddleburyCT #Fraud #Veterans
VETERANS POST
By Freddy Groves
After all the instances of fraud unearthed by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General over the years, I was not surprised to see this special report of something else they uncovered: “Stronger Controls Help Ensure People Barred from Paid Federal Healthcare Jobs Do Not Work for VHA.”
Those who are excluded from getting a VA health-care job are those who previously committed “healthcare fraud, patient abuse, controlled substance violations, or acts subject to license revocation,” among other things such as Medicare fraud. The Health and Human Services OIG keeps a list of those excluded people, but the VA OIG recently ran a test sample of a single pay period, and yes, they found people on that list employed by the VA.
What apparently happened was that the human resources (hiring) staff didn’t correctly do as they were required by federal law, which is run the names of potential new hires through the list to make sure they hadn’t been excluded from employment. In instances of surname changes, the previous last names weren’t checked even though they were noted on the hiring documents.
But that wasn’t the only error. The VA’s Office of Integrity and Compliance was also required to do a monthly computer check of all Social Security numbers of people being paid to make sure excluded people hadn’t slipped through the employment cracks. They pointed to a computer coding error as the reason they weren’t.
Enter the OIG, who made recommendations so it doesn’t happen in the future. One of those recommendations is to do a comprehensive audit of the Social Security numbers of all VA employees to see if any additional names show up.
There will be new training, of course, of the people who didn’t follow policy, plus written guidelines, plus redundancies with multiple eyes looking at data and processes.
You have to love the VA OIG and the people who work there. Surely they have the highest satisfaction level of any who work in government.
© 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.
