Description:
H.R. 1089 would require the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to conduct certain activities regarding the management of its medical centers. Those activities include providing updated and publicly available fact sheets, providing timely notifications on staffing changes, and promptly scheduling appointments at each VA medical center. In total, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would cost $24 million over the 2023-2028 period. Such spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds. Section 2 would require VA to annually provide standardized fact sheets for each VA medical center. Those fact sheets would include information on the number of veterans treated, improvements that were made to the facility, and other information about achievements and special activities at the facility. The department also would be required to provide quarterly fact sheets on average wait times at each medical center. Based on information from VA, CBO expects that the department would hire three full-time employees at each of its 18 regional systems to prepare the required fact sheets for each of the VA medical centers in that region. At an average annual salary of $80,000 per employee, CBO estimates that producing the fact sheets for every VA medical center would cost about $4 million annually and total $22 million over the 2023-2028 period.
