VA Has No Contracts With Outside Hospitals?

VA admits it has no contracts in place for billions of dollars spent on veterans’ medical care
Washington Post
By Lisa Rein
June 2, 2015

But VA officials said they would need to hire at least 600 employees to write and oversee contracts for private care, an expense they cannot afford. They also said that in rural areas in particular, many physicians are nervous about doing business with the government and are wary of the paperwork involved in a contract with VA.

Top officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged to House lawmakers Tuesday that they have been spending billions of dollars a year on private medical care for veterans without contracts, and said it would be too costly and cumbersome to put them in place.

“VA acknowledges that our long-standing procurement processes for care in the community need improvement,” Edward Murray, VA’s acting secretary for management and interim chief financial officer, testified, referring to what’s called non-VA care. Murray said that “serious legal questions” have arisen over medical care veterans get outside VA hospitals and clinics, a growing cost that’s expected to reach more than $10 billion this fiscal year.

The hearing before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs’s investigations panel was the second of three scheduled for the spring to address allegations of billions of dollars in misspending flagged by Jan R. Frye, VA’s deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and logistics, about contracting practices. The Washington Post reported in May that Frye had sent a 35-page memo to VA Secretary Robert McDonald in March accusing agency leaders of making a “mockery” of federal acquisition laws and spending at least $6 billion a year in violation of contracting rules.
read more here