Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) actions on recommendations GAO previously made concerning modifications to the statistical quality control system for compensation, pension, and burial programs and implementation of system changes at its central and regional offices.

GAO found that, in response to GAO recommendations, VA: (1) initiated and planned actions to address the identified problems with its statistical quality control system; (2) required regional offices to review randomly selected cases for quality control; (3) improved the central office role in validating reviews and enforcing compliance with requirements to report corrective action for unacceptable quality; (4) developed measurements of claims processing quality; (5) planned to conduct an in-depth study of the feasibility of measuring the extent of erroneous payments; and (6) planned to have regional reviewers report to regional directors, instead of the adjudication division manager.