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GAO-25-108071 1 (May 5, 2025)

handle is hein.gao/pyonrdns0001 and id is 1 raw text is: G A O U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Comptroller General Washington, DC 20548 of the United States May 5, 2025 The Honorable Douglas Collins Secretary of Veterans Affairs U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs 810 Vermont Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20420 Priority Open Recommendations: Department of Veterans Affairs Dear Secretary Collins: Congratulations on your appointment. The purpose of this letter is to call your personal attention to five areas based on GAO's past work and 29 open priority recommendations, which are enclosed.1 Additionally, there are 198 other GAO open recommendations that we will continue to work with your staff to address. We are highlighting the following areas that warrant your timely and focused attention. Specifically: Improving timely access to the Veterans Community Care Program. Since 2012, we and others have identified challenges the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has faced providing timely access to health care for veterans, such as not specifying the maximum amount of time veterans should have to wait to receive care via the Veterans Community Care Program.2 The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) must ensure that veterans receive timely care under this program. We recommended that VA establish an achievable wait-time goal, develop an appointment scheduling process, and align its monitoring with the time frames established in the community care appointment scheduling process. Implementing these three recommendations would help VA assess its performance and promptly resolve any identified problems to improve the timeliness of veteran appointments, thereby improving the Veterans Community Care Program. Enhancing acquisition management. Federal agencies, including VA, face significant, long- standing challenges in acquisition management that increase the risk of waste and mismanagement. As a result, VA acquisition management has been on GAO's High-Risk List since 2019. We previously testified that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed problems in VA's supply chain management. 1GAO considers a recommendation to be a priority if when implemented it may significantly improve government operations, for example, by realizing large dollar savings; eliminating mismanagement, fraud, and abuse; or making progress toward addressing a high-risk or duplication issue. 21n response to the VA MISSION Act of 2018, VA established the new Veterans Community Care Program in 2019. See VA MISSION Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-182, tit. I, § 101, 132 Stat. 1393, 1395 (2018). GAO-25-108071 VA Priority Recommendations Page 1

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