Review of VA’s Compliance with the Payment Integrity Information Act for Fiscal Year 2024

The VA OIG conducted this review to determine whether VA complied with the requirements of the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA) for FY 2024. PIIA requires federal agencies to identify and review all programs and activities they administer that may be susceptible to significant improper payments based on OMB guidance. PIIA also requires each OIG to review its agency’s improper payment reports and issue an annual report. In FY 2024, VA reported improper and unknown payment estimates totaling $2.2 billion for seven programs. Of that amount, $1.1 billion (about 50 percent) represented a monetary loss, and the remaining $1.1 billion was considered either a nonmonetary loss that cannot be recovered or an unknown payment. These results represent a reduction of about $1 billion (32 percent) from FY 2023 results. VA satisfied five of the six requirements under PIIA. VA did not meet requirement 6 because it did not report an improper and unknown payment rate of less than 10 percent for two programs that had estimates in the materials accompanying their financial statements. VA met additional requirements for high-priority programs by providing quarterly updates to OMB that included plans to prevent and recover monetary losses from improper payments. The OIG recommended the under secretary for benefits reduce improper and unknown payments to below 10 percent for the Pension Program—a repeat recommendation from the previous two fiscal years’ reports—and the under secretary for health reduce improper and unknown payments to below 10 percent for the Purchased Long-Term Services and Supports Program—a repeat recommendation each year since the OIG’s first PIIA report for FY 2020.