Waste of the Day: Veterans’ Hospital Equipment Is Missing
Topline: The Veterans Health Administration has lost an estimated 5% of its reusable medical equipment worth at least $211 million -- including exam tables, computers and microscopes -- and “will continue to do so if processes are not improved,” according to a new audit from the Veterans Affairs inspector general.
Key facts: VA hospitals own over 2 million pieces of nonexpendable equipment that is meant to be used for two years or more, valued at $12 billion. Federal auditors recently visited hospitals to see if the VA was properly tracking the equipment and found that thousands of items had disappeared.
The auditors estimated that a third of the equipment — 537,000 items — is in a different location than inventory records claim, and an additional 75,500 items are missing entirely.
It’s possible there is even more missing equipment, because the VA is only required to keep track of inventory worth more than $5,000.
Some of the nonexpendable equipment is tracked using electronic tags, but some of the tags have dead batteries or only show what building the item is in and not what room.
The VA also uses an “inventory by exception” system in which items that have their location recorded during routine maintenance do not need to be included in annual inventory reports for up to 24 months, even though most items are required to be logged every 12 months. Auditors wrote that “a lot can go wrong, including losing equipment,” because of the inventory-by-exception system.
There are also staffing issues contributing to the missing equipment. Some VA employees working on inventory could not search for items because they did not have the keys to all the rooms in the hospital. Some hospitals have staffing levels below 40%, which employees said made it harder to fill out inventory reports on time.
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Background: All 139 Veterans Health Administration facilities had staffing shortages in 2025, with 4,434 unfilled positions. In 2024, there were only 2,959 unfilled jobs, according to the inspector general.
The Health Administration is just one component of the VA, which plans to shed 30,000 employees in the coming months. VA Secretary Doug Collins announced in September he plans to eliminate “excess positions” throughout the department.
Summary: Missing inventory is nothing new for the federal government, but a hospital having supplies readily available could be a matter of life and death.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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