Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the Veterans Administration's (VA) Office of Inspector General's (OIG) methodology for identifying VA physicians with license sanctions.
GAO found that the OIG study: (1) ran a computer match of physicians listed in the VA database with the Federation of State Medical Boards database to identify physicians with license sanctions; (2) identified 93 VA physicians with license sanctions; (3) did not include contract physicians or physicians providing services without VA compensation; and (4) did not include all VA medical center physicians and residents. GAO also found that the VA Department of Medicine and Surgery's (DMS) plans to use the OIG methodology for biennial reviews of physicians' licenses do not include review of: (1) residents, since they are under continual supervision; (2) contract physicians, since that is the contractors' responsibility; and (3) fee-basis physicians, since such review would make them VA employees and create an additional work load for VA. GAO believes that Congress may wish to consider requiring VA to include all of its paid or authorized physicians in its biennial reviews.
