Aurora, CO, USA. April 14, 2020. Medical tents set up outside the entrance to the new VA medical center in Aurora, Colorado offering veterans drive-thru Covid-19 screening and testing. Image: Jim Lambert/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe GAO has called on the VA to improve its ability to estimate funding and staffing needs for a future pandemic or similar emergency, saying that in the Coronavirus pandemic, the department “found it was not prepared to estimate the amount of supplemental funding needed during such a catastrophic event, because it did not have the modeling capacity to do so.”
A report said that during the pandemic, the VA largely relied on supplemental spending laws to cover its added expenses; through last September, the VA had spent nearly all of the money it received under those laws, more than $36 billion, mostly in its health care branch. In addition to supporting higher demand on ongoing programs, it added, the department spent money for reasons such as upgrading its IT to support widened telehealth services.
It said the VA uses a model to project health care and other spending on a two-year basis, but that the pandemic introduced factors that the modeling system does not account for, such higher enrollment rates, increased usage of benefits, and new costs such as for COVID prevention and treatment.
The GAO recommended that the VA revise its modeling to systematically assess and manage the risk of catastrophic events, noting that for example FEMA already uses such modeling for its workforce staffing projections in emergencies, and that such modeling is used in other agencies to assess the risks related to climate change.
In response, management pointed to an effort to update its modeling to account for more scenarios, but the GAO said it will monitor those steps since it was not clear how the VA planned to take needed steps including data collection and the ability to run budget simulations on a continual basis.
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