Careers
Health Care
Our Work
Recent Accomplishments
Ongoing Projects
Key Contacts
Our Work
The Health Care team leads GAO’s efforts in supporting congressional oversight of the federal agencies and programs that tangibly affect the lives of all Americans. Collectively, federal health care programs’ expenditures represent about one-quarter of all federal spending. Ensuring that these programs provide access to quality care, protect the public, and remain fiscally sustainable is one of the greatest challenges facing Congress and the President in the 21st century.
We provide analyses, recommendations, and policy options to Congress and the executive branch to help meet the needs of our aging and diverse population. For the following departments and agencies, we examine not only their achievement of program goals but also their management, information systems, human capital, and financial operations:
- Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Food and Drug Administration, Indian Health Service, National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Veterans Health Administration
- Department of Defense’s (DOD) TRICARE
Recent Accomplishments
- Strengthened Medicaid program integrity by alerting Congress to deficiencies in the staff and financial resources for states’ anti-fraud-and-abuse activities.
- Encouraged the use of competition and other cost-reducing techniques to set Medicare payments for durable medical equipment and supplies.
- Identified privacy and access deficiencies in VA’s efforts to provide health care for the increasing number of women veterans seeking VA services.
- Encouraging manufacturers of controlled substances to develop risk management plans that contain strategies for monitoring the use of these drugs and identifying potential abuse.
- Strengthened VA’s Patient Safety Program through the identification of oversight and compliance deficiencies in the review of physicians’ credentials and prior work history and the reporting of sexual assaults in VA facilities.
- Strengthened VA and DOD’s Federal Recovery Coordinator Program through systematic oversight of enrollment, workload, and staffing decisions.
- Encouraged manufacturers of controlled substances to develop risk management plans that contain strategies for monitoring the use of these drugs and identifying potential abuse.
- Identified significant shortcomings in efforts to protect nursing home residents from abuse and to ensure that home health beneficiaries receive quality care.
- Evaluated shortcomings in the quality of communications to the public about Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit and plan options.
Ongoing Projects
- Determining whether Medicare and Medicaid payment methods and rates and future health workforce subsidies need to be modified.
- Analyzing pharmaceutical pricing and practices to assess their effects on federally funded health care programs.
- Determining the extent to which states respond to Medicaid financing oversight.
- Determining the impact on veteran’s safety of VA’s purchasing and tracking of expendable medical supplies and reusable medical equipment.
- Examining how DOD conducts traumatic brain injury assessments of servicemembers prior to deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan and when returning from deployment.
- Evaluating the unique integration of VA and DOD health care services into one Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, Illinois.
- Evaluating federal, state, and local preparedness to respond to naturally occurring disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks.
- Examining the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of medical device recalls.
- Examining federal procedures to ensure the safety of biological laboratories.
- Analyzing policy options to respond to growing financial pressure on federal and state budgets to provide appropriate, high-quality long-term care services.
Key Contacts
Managing Director: Cynthia A. Bascetta
Directors: James C. Cosgrove, Marcia G. Crosse, John E. Dicken, Debra Draper, Katherine M. Iritani, Kathleen M. King, Linda T. Kohn, Randall B. Williamson, Carolyn L. Yocom
Phone: (202) 512-7114
Mailing Address:
U.S. Government Accountability Office
Health Care
Room 5A14
441 G Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20548