The Region News

Washington, DC – On May 17, 2023, Ranking Member Frank J. Mrvan participated in the House Veterans’ Affairs Joint Subcommittee on Health and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing entitled “VHA Recruitment and Retention: Is Bureaucracy Holding Back a Quality Workforce?"

A video of the hearing is available here, and the Congressman’s opening statement as prepared for delivery is below:

With more than 400,000 employees nationwide and the second-largest budget in the federal government, VA employees are vital to the healthcare and benefits that are provided to our veterans.  

Congress has provided VA with many authorities to improve recruitment and retention of healthcare professionals, and as we are currently seeing at VA as well as in the private sector, recruitment and retention of clinical staff is a significant issue.  

Even with the enactment of the PACT Act, which has provided VA with a broad range of new authorities to aid in recruiting and retaining staff, we continue to hear that VA is experiencing challenges.

One major issue we have been made aware of that impacts recruitment and retention is errors in compensation.  Specifically, we have heard of issues with offers being made to employees, which are later changed when they accept the job.  This “bait and switch” in salary, job description, and schedule do not imbue a sense of confidence among employees who are looking to take new positions at VA.

We have also heard of VA employees receiving debt letters to recoup money they were paid due to HR coding mistakes.  New VA employees often take positions that offer lower compensation than they would in the private sector, and these errors create a significant financial burden.

I hope to address these compensation errors today.  Paying our employees what they are owed should not be difficult.  VA employees provide excellent care for our nation’s veterans.  The least we can do is pay them what they are owed. 

While the implementation of these hiring authorities and compensation issues has proven challenging, I would also like to highlight the effect that IT modernization delays and failures have on recruitment and retention.  VA’s delays with competing and awarding a new HR modernization system, along with the other administrative challenges, is a hindrance to progress.  

Last Congress, I was proud to have supported the passage of the IT Reform Act, and we will continue to work to provide oversight to improve program management and acquisition controls for large IT projects at VA.  Veterans and employees have had enough of ineffective IT solutions, and they deserve better.

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and discussing these and other ways to improve the ability to recruit and retain dedicated healthcare professionals at VA.

Original source can be found here.