As federal investigations continue to unveil patient safety concerns and care quality issues at Veterans Health Administration facilities, leaders at these facilities can address staff shortages by providing opportunities for U.S. Public Health Service clinicians to transfer to VHA clinical sites, according to a Health Affairs blog post.
Here are five takeaways from the article.
1. When analyzing staffing shortages at Veterans Affairs facilities, the authors noted the VA takes 110 days to hire a nurse and 177 days to hire a nurse practitioner on average. For physicians, this time period is often longer.
2. In 2017, then Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, signed the Memorandum of Agreement with the VHA, which said any of the 6,500 USPHS Commissioned Corps officers can provide full-time, direct patient care to veterans in VHA hospitals and clinics in underserved communities. However, due to administrative delays, the VHA has accepted fewer than 10 of these officers to date.
3. The authors propose for USPHS leadership to use the authority gained from this memorandum to place officers from other agencies at VHA clinical sites for short- and long-term assignments based on a facility's needs.
4. Additionally, to create a long-term USPHS career pathway at the VHA, the USPHS and the VHA should work together with Congress to provide additional funding for 1,500 new USPHS commissioned officers to serve at VHA clinical sites.
5. "USPHS clinicians bring their experience and understanding of what it means to be in uniform to the veterans who they serve," the authors wrote. "The scope and scale of the VHA crisis represents a public health crisis, to which assignment of nimble, mission-driven USPHS officers represents a practical response."