Enhancing Health Care Delivery
- VA has faced challenges in recent years managing its resources consistent with workload demands to enhance health care delivery as its patient workload has nearly doubled over the last 10 years.
- The increased workload includes aging veterans who need long-term care and new veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who have unique health care needs.
- VA has faced challenges matching resources and its health care workload in its budget formulation and execution process.
- These challenges resulted in supplemental requests for appropriations in fiscal years 2005 and 2006 because VA used unrealistic assumptions regarding cost savings to be realized from proposed policy changes, made errors in estimating the effect of policy changes on expenditures, and had insufficient data on the numbers of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who would seek VA health care.
- VA did not provide timely notice to Congress regarding its management of resources to meet workload demands in its budget execution process.
- VA also did not have an adequate method in place for tracking spending for new mental health initiatives.
^ Back to topWhat Needs to Be Done
- Because VA has faced challenges matching resources and health care workload in its budget formulation process, VA needs to incorporate into its reporting to Congress measures of patient workload.
Highlights of GAO-06-958 (PDF)
^ Back to topKey Reports
- VA Health Care: Spending for Mental Health Strategic Plan Initiatives Was Substantially Less Than Planned
- GAO-07-66, November 21, 2006
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 39 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
- VA Health Care: Budget Formulation and Reporting on Budget Execution Need Improvement
- GAO-06-958, September 20, 2006
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 37 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
- Veterans Affairs: Limited Support for Reported Health Care Management Efficiency Savings
- GAO-06-359R, February 1, 2006
- Summary (HTML) Full Report (PDF, 22 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
