HCFA Research

Agency Practices and Other Factors Threaten Quality of Mandated Studies Gao ID: PEMD-88-9 June 3, 1988

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO: (1) assessed the relevance, timeliness, and technical adequacy of the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) congressionally mandated research and evaluation activities; and (2) identified key internal and external factors that influenced the HCFA Office of Research and Demonstrations' (ORD) management and dissemination practices.

GAO found that ORD: (1) frequently did not fully respond to the information needs that caused Congress to mandate the report; (2) failed to develop systematic communications with Congress to clarify congressional mandates; (3) sometimes reduced reports' relevance by changing initial study plans and scope; (4) improved earlier report timeliness problems, but still experienced substantial delays during the study execution and report review phases; and (5) inconsistently applied practices for ensuring technical adequacy during project planning and execution and report review. GAO also found that factors affecting the quality of ORD reports included: (1) lack of communication between HCFA and Congress; (2) ORD failure to consider congressional interests during project planning; (3) lack of adequate monitoring; and (4) HCFA reductions in funding and staff.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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