Congress’s medical office operated without proper oversight for years, DoD watchdog says

A government watchdog released findings of an investigation Friday that identified a lack of regulation over a Navy-staffed congressional medical office that provides care and medicine to U.S. lawmakers and Supreme Court justices. The Defense Department Inspector General published an investigation into the Office of the Attending Physician’s policies and procedures amid allegations of misconduct and reports that Attending Physician Rear Adm. Brian Monahan resigned this week. “The absence of [DoD] oversight of clinical quality management and pharmacy operations increases the risks to both patients and Navy medical personnel assigned to the OAP,” the report said. “Without the [DoD] conducting its mandated clinical quality management oversight of Navy medical personnel assigned to the OAP, the [DoD] cannot monitor provider readiness skills, professional competencies, and compliance with Federal law.” The inspector general’s office interviewed former and current Defense Department personnel who worked in the OAP. It also reviewed DoD Hotline complaints from August 2023 to January 2026. The IG described resistance from both the OAP and the federal government that hampered its investigation. Monahan refused to participate in the watchdog’s investigation, and Congress’s general counsel prevented the IG from obtaining internal documents and blocked OAP personnel from speaking to investigators. OAP’s staff included five physicians, two pharmacists and 11 corpsmen as of August 2025. The IG found that the OAP suffered from improper quality management involving Navy medical personnel, the care they provided and the office’s pharmaceutical inventory — problems that resulted from a lack of oversight and the restructuring of supervising bodies. Checks and balances Beginning in 1994, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center personnel were tasked with credentialing medical staff working at the OAP, with the Navy in charge of supervising the WRNMMC. But in 2013, oversight over WRNMMC transitioned from the Navy to the Defense Health Agency without any official guidance or written mandates on how to provide oversight over the OAP, specifically regarding clinical quality management of care provided by Navy medical personnel. “The gap in oversight is, in part, because the DHA has responsibility for overseeing [military treatment facilities], but the OAP is not [a Military Treatment Facility],” the report said. The Defense Department doesn’t technically delegate oversight involving the Navy medical personnel who work at the OAP, but the department has attempted to intervene and provide checks and balances to provide care. But attempts by the WRNMMC to assist with pharmacy staff assistance visits were rebuked, and attempts by the DHA to access OAP internal records were not allowed by the OAP. In fact, the IG found that no wing of the Defense Department believes it has the authority to oversee clinical quality management and pharmaceutical care within the OAP. Rear Adm. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of the U.S. Congress, walks through the Capitol on May 15, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) The IG also found no verifying evidence that the OAP pharmacy had undergone inspections or inventory check-ups, despite the fact that the federal law stipulates that controlled substances are to be regularly inspected. Specifically, neither the Drug Enforcement Agency nor the Defense Department had visited the OAP pharmacy to conduct an overview. The OAP did, however, invite the WRNMMC’s Controlled Substance Inventory Board to observe their pharmaceutical inventory seven times between January 2023 and February 2026. But that number fell short of the mandatory number required by the Navy and DHA. While a Controlled Substance Inventory Board counts drugs and reviews records, it cannot implement change as it does not have authority. The board found five medication inconsistencies, including a lack of prescription records in the medical bags that are used to transport drugs during congressional travel. The IG was unable to verify whether the five errors had been fixed since their discovery. What appeared to be a lax following of guidelines was confirmed by individuals with direct knowledge of the OAP’s everyday operations. “Navy medical personnel with direct knowledge of OAP operations stated that OAP personnel only ‘loosely’ follow naval pharmacy guidelines and that the OAP is not required to, and does not, allow [DoD] pharmacy inspections,” the report said. The government watchdog said the lackadaisical approach and potential noncompliance with standards, due to lack of oversight, increases the risk of providing insufficient care that doesn’t follow federal law. The IG ultimately recommended that the Defense Department appoint an administrative body that oversees medical personnel at the OAP; establish clear policy and procedures for that entity to follow, or coordinate with the House and Senate to ensure care is adequate; review pharmacy inspection records at the OAP; and potentially instruct the DoD or DEA to conduct additional inspection of the OAP pharmacy if the OAP is found to have violated federal law. An arduous investigation The IG’s process to arrive at a conclusion was anything but smooth, as the government watchdog was met with pushback at several steps along the way. During the investigation, Rear Adm. Brian Monahan, the attending physician for Congress, “recused himself from the evaluation and directed [the DoD IG] to a congressional counsel for any future communication with the OAP.” This presented a roadblock to the investigation, making it impossible for the IG to converse with the head individual in charge of the office, as well as access internal OAP policies. The Naval Inspector General had also previously reached out for information from the OAP but was stymied in the same way, with the OAP blocking their ability to access internal documents. The DoD IG, attempting to work around Monahan’s recusal, asked Monahan on March 9, 2026, if he might facilitate correspondence with another OAP contact so that the IG could conduct interviews and submit requests for internal documents and records for review. The following day, the U.S. House of Representatives deputy general counsel told the DoD IG that naval personnel working within the OAP were not allowed to speak without the approval of Congress. The IG decided not to challenge the response and instead focus on interviewing personnel from the Navy, Defense Health Agency and Defense Department. The government watchdog requested access to OAP records and documents and permission to interview OAP personnel one last time on August 13, 2026, but was denied again by the U.S. House of Representatives deputy general counsel. The DoD IG was thus unable to access a bulk of OAP records, including “clinical quality management policies, internal pharmacy procedures, prescription records, climate assessments, or internal peer reviews.”