Dive Brief:
- After this year's revelations about a broken treatment system for veterans, Congress has authorized $16.3 billion to help the Department of Veterans Affairs clean up its act and marked $5 billion for increasing capacity for patients.
- There is an expectation that some of that $5 billion – and no one knows how much – is bound to construction projects as part of the improvements, along with hiring more people to take care of veterans.
- Another piece of the legislation mandates an outside study of the VA's project-delivery, and the consultant who gets the contract has to deliver the product in 240 days.
Dive Insight:
The law also establishes a commission to look at where the VA should be in 20 years in order to deliver quality care in a timely way, and one seat is reserved for someone who knows about constructing medical facilities.
