The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) will recover more than $2 billion through audits and investigations of fraud, waste and abuse in HHS programs, the office announced last Thursday (Jun 12).

"OIG's accomplishments reflect a robust oversight agenda implemented through audits, evaluations, and compliance and enforcement activities," said Inspector General Daniel Levinson in an OIG press release. "It is through a combination of vigilant oversight, outreach to the health care community, and partnership with government agencies at all levels that we are able to fulfill our mission to protect the integrity of HHS programs and beneficiaries."

A couple of the incidents outlined in OIG's "Semiannual Report to Congress," which outlines the body's plans to recover a total of $2.2 billion through the first half of FY 2008, involve the National Institutes of Health. These included $11.8 million in mis-procured funds that the NIH acquired from the Department of Defense (DOD) between 2002 and 2006 but charged to the wrong appropriation category. The OIG also found that "NIH did not always maintain adequate documentation with respect to acquisition planning, competition, award decisions, and contractor monitoring" when procuring funds from the DOD. Also contributing to the OIG's $2.2 billion total were $24,221 recovered from Charrisse Fairfax-Brown, a former NIH employee who was convicted to 45 days in prison for stealing government property and using a government credit card for unauthorized purchases, such as shoes, clothes, jewelry, a laptop computer, and cable TV service.

The OIG report also states that the NIH needs to resolve problems with its oversight of conflicts of interest among its extramural researchers. Between 2004 and 2006, the NIH could not provide OIG an accurate count of the financial conflicts of interest reports that it received from grantees, according to the report. The OIG also found that about 89 percent of the 438 financial conflicts of interest reports received from NIH grantee institutions in 2006, did not state the nature of the conflicts or the way in which they would be managed.