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By: FEDweek StaffCongress has passed (S-2372) the latest in a long line of bills revising personnel policies at the VA, although unlike recent past changes in law that focused mainly on enhancing management’s disciplinary powers, the measure would enhance several benefits for the department’s employees.
The bill was enacted despite objections of interests including the AFGE union–which represents most of the department’s workforce–who argued that it represents a step toward privatizing veterans’ care, since its main emphasis is to allow veterans to get care outside the department’s own system under certain circumstances.
The bill seeks to address the VA’s recruitment and retention issues, which have resulted in a vacancy rate of 10 percent or more in the 360,000-position workforce, by enhancing recruitment, relocation and retention incentives and cash awards; expanding and making more generous a student loan reimbursement program specific to the VA; and offering scholarships to medical students in return for a service commitment. The bill also would allow VA health care professionals to practice telemedicine regardless of the location of the provider or patient during the treatment regardless of state licensing laws.
It further would create a base closings-like process to realign or close some facilities and use the savings for new space, in reaction to the department’s complaints about barriers to closing under-used or outdated facilities and the cost of their upkeep. It would order the VA to report on its physical assets, which would be reviewed by a new “asset and infrastructure review commission” that in turn would issue recommendations that if approved by the President would take effect unless Congress blocked them.
