Complaints of retaliation against whistleblowing VA employees are so numerous that the agency’s IG can’t get to them all, according to testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
An IG official said whistleblowing has been vital, for example, to exposing issues with manipulation of patient records to make it appear that veterans are being seen more timely than they were.
“We receive far more allegations than we have the resource capacity to review, thus the OIG must be highly selective in the cases we accept,” deputy IG Linda Halliday told the panel. “The OIG receives approximately 40,000 complaints annually from employees, veterans, their families, and the general public, making our hotline one of the largest and most active in the OIG community. We must use our professional judgment to accept only the allegations that we believe represent the most serious risks to veterans, beneficiaries, and taxpayers. This includes indicators of significant fraud, compliance failures, systemic problems in program management and financial stewardship, and improprieties by senior officials.”
For allegations that are not accepted by the OIG but that appear to warrant further review, the OIG makes external referrals to VA management, she added.
