The Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act strengthens support for our nation’s veterans and caregivers by improving access to Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) care and benefits, enhancing programs for student veterans and their families, and providing increased oversight to ensure the VA is meeting its lawful obligations.

“This is an important step forward to support our men and women who have served and earned quality care and support. I’m pleased provisions I championed to attract top providers to serve veterans at the VA, ensure proper management is in place at its facilities, advance a more comprehensive approach to the veteran suicide crisis and more are one step closer to becoming law,” Boozman said. “This bipartisan legislation represents our commitment to deliver the support our veterans and their families expect and deserve.”

Several Boozman-authored or cosponsored measures were included in the legislative package, including: 

Sections of the VA Clinician Appreciation, Recruitment, Education, Expansion, and Retention Support (CAREERS) Act, to:

• Modernize the VA’s antiquated pay system for physicians and other high-level clinicians, which will particularly benefit rural and other hard-to-hire markets;
• Update VA’s pay stipulations to include optometrists, expanding the coverage of certain rules and benefits to optometrists as well;
• Authorize the VA to waive pay limitations for the recruitment or retention of critical health care personnel, with a priority for certain positions, locations, and contracted care;
• Authorize the VA to have flexibility in compensating specified professionals, including the ability to pay awards, recruitment or relocation bonuses, retention allowances, incentives or bonuses, and earning from fee-basis appointments; and
• Increase and fine-tune the VA’s workforce data reporting requirements to help the VA and Congress be better informed on how to improve the hiring and onboarding process for future employees enterprise-wide.

Click here to view Senator Boozman’s remarks on the CAREERS Act.

The Veterans Affairs Medical Center Absence and Notification Timeline (VACANT) Act, to:

• Limit the detailing of medical center directors to different positions within the VA; and
• Require the VA Secretary to ensure a plan is in place to fill vacant medical center director positions within 180 days of detailing. 

The Not Just a Number Act, to:

• Require the VA to examine veterans’ benefits usage in its annual suicide prevention report in order to evaluate the relationship between VA benefits and suicide outcomes;
• Require the VA to analyze which benefits have the greatest impact on preventing suicide; and
• Require the Department to issue recommendations for expansion of those benefits in the fight to combat veteran suicides.

Click here to view Senator Boozman’s remarks on the Not Just a Number Act.

Gerald’s Law Act, to:

• Expand Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) burial benefits eligibility to terminally ill veterans who pass away at a non-VA facility while receiving hospice care. 

The VA OIG Training Act of 2023, to:

• Provide training to VA employees on reporting waste, fraud and abuse in coordination with the VA Office of the Inspector General (VA OIG), which serves veterans and the public by conducting meaningful independent oversight of the VA.