Review of VA's Controls for the Pharmaceutical Prime Vendor Fast Pay System

At the request of the VA Secretary and the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, we reviewed VA’s Fast Pay system. This system processed $4.3 billion of pharmaceutical prime vendor purchases in FY 2011. We found Fast Pay consistently provided payments within 48 hours and VA paid accurate contract prices for purchased supplies. However, the National Acquisition Center had not resolved pricing differences of about $46.4 million for pharmaceutical prime vendor purchases from December 2009 through April 2011. In addition, inadequate segregation of ordering and receiving duties makes VA vulnerable to fraudulent activity. We recommended VA timely resolve and recover purchase pricing errors and timely completion of price analyses, as well as proper segregation of supply ordering and receiving duties, and adequate verification of supply receipts. The Department concurred with our findings.