Veteran Oversight Now

August VON podcast script
Louis Calderon:
This is Veteran Oversight Now, the Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General official podcast. I’m your host, Louis Calderon.
The Honorable Cheryl L. Mason was confirmed by the Senate as the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs on July 31st. She was sworn in on August 4th and began work at the OIG the same day. IG Mason previously served as the chairman of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals at VA. She is the spouse of a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel and daughter of a World War II US Navy veteran. For more information on IG Mason, see her bio on our website.
Shawn Steele, director of the human capital and operations division for the Office of Audits and Evaluations, testified on July 22nd at a hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. His testimony focused on the OIG’s findings in a recent report on deficiencies in VA’s recruitment, retention, and relocation incentive payments.
Shawn Steele:
Audio Clips (Time is from the video posted on VA OIG YouTube page.)
[At 1:12] Our work shows that despite VHA’s ability to hire non-competitively, they continue to experience staffing shortages for positions fundamental to the safe and effective delivery of care to veterans. Other IG reports highlighted weaknesses in VA’s processes and controls governing the use of pay incentives. Our 2017 audit found that VA needed to improve controls over recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives to ensure they were strategically and prudently used. We also reported in May 2024 that VA awarded $10.8 million in critical skill incentives to nearly all VHA and VBA central office executives without required support showing the employee possessed a high demand skill or skill that is out of shortage.
Louis Calderon:
Later in his opening statement, Shawn would add…
Shawn Steele:
[At 4:16] Our reports have also shown that attempts to narrow those staffing gaps through recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives do not consistently follow requirements. It is also concerning that these issues are not routinely detected by VA’s quality control measures. VHA must emphasize to responsible personnel the importance of following policies and procedures to safeguard against improper payments. OIG teams will continue to monitor VHA staffing needs and the use of incentive payments. In doing so, VHA will be held accountable for securing qualified personnel to provide high-quality care to veterans while making the most effective use of taxpayer dollars.
Louis Calderon:
The OIG also provided a statement for the record for the HVAC’s Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity’s hearing Path of Purpose: Restoring the VA VR&E Program to Effectively Serve Veterans on July 16. You can find OIG written statements as well as videos of the oral statements in the congressional relations section of our website.
Now, here’s updates from our Office of Investigations.
A VA OIG and FBI investigation revealed that a former employee of a VA subcontractor accessed a veteran’s VA medical records without a legitimate business need. The former employee also made a false statement to VA OIG and FBI agents about the type of individually identifying health information he used to access the veteran’s VA medical records. He was sentenced in the District of Nebraska to 24 months’ probation after previously pleading guilty to the wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
In another investigation, a veteran received VA disability compensation benefits with a
100% service-connected rating for legal blindness while maintaining a Florida driver’s license after medically retiring from the Army in 1983 due to an eye condition. The VA OIG proactive investigation revealed the veteran misrepresented his true visual acuity during VA examinations in order to fraudulently receive 100% service-connected disability benefits for blindness. Despite his claims to VA, the defendant maintained a Florida driver’s license (since 1993) and passed multiple associated vision examinations with the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles. By pleading guilty, the veteran acknowledged that he fraudulently led VA to believe that he was blind when he was capable of operating a motor vehicle. The loss to VA is approximately $1.1 million. The veteran pleaded guilty in the Middle District of Florida to theft of government funds.
Our oversight work continues as the OIG published 18 reports in July.
This includes three Office of Audits and Evaluations reports focused on financial efficiency related to federal supply schedule contracts and FSS pharmaceutical and nonpharmaceutical proposals. Also, a management advisory memorandum detailed how the OIG determined that VBA did not take all corrective actions for veterans prematurely denied service connection for conditions that could be associated with burn pit exposure.
VBA’s Pension and Fiduciary Service, which administers the death benefits program, assists eligible claimants with burial expenses, plot costs, and transportation costs for a veteran’s remains. To streamline claims processing for death benefits, VBA launched a system called pension automation, which extracts data from claim applications and uses rules to generate decisions and notification letters for claims. Given VBA’s increased reliance on automation, the OIG conducted a review to determine whether VBA’s automation system is accurately processing claims for death benefits. Based on a statistical sample of claims from
January 5, 2023, through March 31, 2024, the OIG estimated 83 percent contained an error, resulting in about $1.9 million in underpayments to survivors. Although the system correctly processed most burial and plot allowances, an estimated 9,800 transportation claims were improperly processed. The team identified three types of errors: the automated system prematurely denied transportation claims, some approved transportation claims were never reimbursed, and the notification letter to claimants did not provide a decision on transportation reimbursement. These errors occurred because the system did not have rules to ensure transportation benefits were properly processed and because of inconsistent guidance in VBA policy. VBA concurred with the OIG’s two recommendations to address these deficiencies.
Two Care in the Community reports, prepared by the Office of Healthcare Inspections, focused on medical facilities in VISN 4 and 10. VA’s VISN 4 covers facilities in Pennsylvania and Delaware and parts of Ohio, West Virginia, New York and New Jersey. VISN 10 provides care to veterans throughout Michigan’s lower peninsula, Indiana, Ohio, and Northern Kentucky.
OHI also published healthcare facility inspection reports on facilities in Connecticut, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts.
These, along with the other reports the OIG published in July, resulted in 101 recommendations to VA.
Read more about the OIG’s oversight work in July 2025 on our website at vaoig.gov.
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Thank you for listening.