DALLAS — The Dallas VA Medical Center will need to recover $3.7 million it overpaid a contractor for wheelchair-accessible transportation services between 2022 and 2023, according to a review published Wednesday by the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The OIG review was conducted following a hotline referral received in February 2023 alleging mismanagement of four contracts for wheelchair-accessible transportation services managed by the Health Administration Service at the Dallas VA Medical Center in VA’s North Texas Health Care System, the document said.
The complaint "suggested possible invoice and payment violations of VA’s financial policy, including that staff did not review invoices before they were paid and invoices did not reflect the current contract prices."
A team looked at 241 invoices from April 2022 through August 2023, totaling over $12.6 million, and found that 238 of 241 invoices (or 66,640 of the 81,887 trips) were "inaccurately invoiced and led to $3.7 million in invoice overcharges and duplicate payments by the Health Administration Service." Three of the 241 were found to be duplicate invoices.
Only 15,155 of the 81,887 trips (18.5%) were correctly charged, according to the review. Ninety-two trips (0.1%) were considered undercharged.
"This occurred because certifying officials did not verify invoices and relied on program assistants to approve or deny invoices for certification," the document reads.
Two examples given by the OIG showed the inaccurate invoices were caused due to calculation errors and using the wrong rate from a prior contract instead of the correct ones.
- Example 1:
- "For a one-way wheelchair-accessible van trip with a travel distance of 30.89 miles, the invoice charge was $191.50. The charge should have been $124.01 — a $75.00 base rate for the first 20 miles and $4.50 for each of the 10.89 subsequent miles. This resulted in an overpayment of $67.50."
- Example 2:
- "Fourteen certified invoices were billed for mileage at higher rates than what was permitted by the contract. According to the mobility manager, the assistants used rates from a prior contract to approve invoice charges. The total amount of overcharges for these invoices was $20,533."
According to VA financial policy, the certifying official is responsible for reviewing invoices to ensure their accuracy and that they are not duplicates or have not been paid previously. However, the OIG found that certifying officials at the Dallas VA Medical Center relied on the assistants for invoice review and certified the invoices without verifying invoices for accuracy.
The OIG team interviewed three certifying officials about their process for certifying invoices, and all three stated they relied on the assistants’ reviews and decisions to certify or deny the invoice, according to the report.
The review also found that the mobility manager did not ensure staff followed VA financial policy requirements for reviewing and certifying invoices.
In light of the review's findings, the OIG recommended that the Dallas medical center director, in conjunction with the Health Administration Service chief, develop local policy and standard operating procedures to ensure veteran patient wheelchair-accessible invoices are adequately reviewed before payment. The OIG also recommended that the Health Administration Service chief recover the approximately $3.7 million in overpayments.
The VA Heart of Texas Health Care Network director and executive medical center director concurred with the OIG’s two recommendations, the review stated.
"To address these recommendations, the VA North Texas Health Care System is developing local policy and recovering overcharges from the contractor, with target completion dates for these activities of September 2024 and September 2025, respectively," the document concluded.
To read the full OIG review, click here.
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