A recent GAO report found vulnerabilities in the VA’s Community Care Provider program that allowed unqualified medical providers to remain in the VA’s referral system. (Photo: Hush Naidoo Jade)
In a Government Accountability Office report released on Jan. 13, “vulnerabilities” were detected in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Veterans Community Care program that allowed hundreds of “potentially ineligible providers” to remain in the VA’s referral system.
The Veterans Community Care program allows veterans who cannot easily receive medical treatment from VA medical facilities—usually because of extreme distances—to visit eligible care providers instead. However, the VA is still responsible for ensuring that community providers are “qualified and competent.”
In California, the Community Care Provider program has been beneficial to veterans living in more rural communities between major VA medical centers.
After investigating a sample size of 800,000 community care providers from across the United States, the GAO uncovered roughly 1,600 providers that were either deceased, barred from working with the federal government, or had lost their medical license. In one case, for example, a care provider had been granted admission into the program despite losing their medical license in 2019 and documentation noting that the provider “posed a clear and immediate danger to public health and safety.”
Moreover, the investigation found that while the VA and its vendors have a system in place to remove potentially ineligible providers after a disqualifying event, these “existing controls missed some providers who could have been identified with enhanced controls and more consistent implementation of standard operating procedures.”
Despite the large number of ineligible providers, however, the GAO report does not list any instances where the VA recommended veterans to unqualified or incompetent care providers.
Additionally, the GAO learned that the Community Care Provider program’s applications process may be vulnerable to fraud.
Readers can read the full GAO report as well as the department’s recommendations here.
Author: Christian Southards
Coming from a family with a proud military background and wanting to contribute his writing skills to a worthy cause, Christian began writing for the California American Legion in August of 2020. His father is a 25-year Army Veteran and his grandfather served in the Navy during Vietnam.
