The Government Accountability Office released a preliminary report detailing the Department of Veterans Affairs’ ongoing difficulties modernizing its health care facilities. (Photo: Cory Doctorow)
On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office released a preliminary report detailing staffing, communications, and planning concerns the Department of Veterans Affairs has struggled to rectify since the GAO began oversight operations in 2018.
First among the concerns is the VA’s ability to find and retain staff, which has resulted in project delays and management issues across the board. The GAO says that the VA has been able to address vacancy rates in some fields. For example, after instituting a special salary rate for its engineers the VA saw its engineer vacancy rate improve 4.6% from 2019 to 2020 despite the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The GAO reports that “VA officials, however, continue to describe staffing difficulties in planning and executing projects and limits on the number of projects that facilities can undertake.”
The second concern the GAO notes includes communications issues between different departments as the VA continues to modernize its health care facilities across the United States. The GAO says that the VA has taken positive steps here as well, but ineffective communication has been responsible for delaying the launch of several new facilities by creating confusion in oversight offices. This has delayed actions such as hiring, furnishing facilities, and the deployment of medical equipment.
Finally, the GAO says the VA lacks a clear system that can accurately evaluate the progress of ongoing projects and highlight areas for improvement.
The GAO says these three concerns highlight the VA’s difficulties with addressing goals outlined in the VA MISSION Act of 2018, noting the VA “faces a growing backlog of maintenance on its facilities” and “faces challenges aligning its capital assets to meet veterans’ needs given ongoing changes in veterans’ demographics.”
Readers can access the full text of the June 9 GAO report 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.