S. 1319 would require the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to publish and regularly update information about health care staffing, patient wait times, and other information regarding the quality of care it provides on its Access to Care public website. The department would be required to audit the accuracy of that information annually. The published data would be directly accessed from the department’s main homepage as well as the homepage of each of its medical facilities.
VA publishes the required information on its websites and performs quality audits on its reporting under the VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks (MISSION) Act. Thus, CBO expects that VA’s current practices would satisfy those requirements.
The bill also would require VA to report to the Congress on the results of each audit on an annual basis. Using information about similar reports, CBO estimates that satisfying that requirement would cost less than $500,000 over the 2022-2026 period. Such spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.
