Performance Awards Also Targeted

The Senate VA reform bill further would bar use of measures such as appointment scheduling goals in performance evaluations for senior executives and health care employees at VA; use of those standards is widely seen as having encouraged the manipulation of data to make the department’s performance appear better than it actually was, in order for employees to receive monetary awards. The department already has said it is dropping those measures on its own but putting the ban in law would go a step farther. The House version would bar payment of any performance awards at VA through 2016, even to employees working in functions unrelated to the scandal. The House further plans hearings later this week on performance awards the department has paid to senior employees at facilities implicated in the scandal. A Senate committee earlier approved narrower language as part of a spending bill to ban performance awards for senior executives in VA’s medical branch until reforms in patient care are carried out. Both the House and Senate further have backed expanding aallowing veterans to go outside the VA system for care, while the Senate measure calls for boosting in-house medical staff as well.