A supervisor at the Honolulu Veterans Administration office manipulated data to give the appearance of faster benefits claims processing, according to a VA Office of the Inspector General report.
The report found that the data manipulation happened from April through August 2014, concurrent with a national scandal following reports indicating delayed wait times at a VA hospital in Phoenix led to the deaths of 40 veterans. The system administrator "inappropriately removed system controls for 100 benefits claims," according to the report.
The system administrator admitted to removing the controls from the record system but denied any intention of falsely representing data. Instead, he said he wanted to prioritize the most difficult tasks in the workload for his team, according to the report.
The manipulation may have resulted in some veterans receiving additional compensation for dependents they were not entitled to and may have detracted from the overall efficiency of the department. The VA OIG recommended that the Honolulu VA office director take immediate action to correct the supervisor's action and gave the director authority to decide punitive action for the employee, according to the report.