Sen. Cruz: I’m Hopeful Republicans and Democrats Will Come Together to Modernize VA IT Infrastructure and Improve the Delivery of Services
Joins Concerned Veterans for America in ‘Defend & Reform’ town hall in Austin
AUSTIN, Texas - Last night, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) participated in the second of a series of ‘Defend & Reform' town halls with Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) in Austin. There, along with Director of Policy Dan Caldwell, Sen. Cruz discussed his efforts on behalf of veterans, including implementing VA accountability, expanding veteran choice and modernizing the VA's IT infrastructure.
The town hall in its entirety may be viewed here. Still photos of the event may be viewed here.
When asked about the VA Information Technology Restructuring Act, Sen. Cruz discussed the importance of modernizing VA IT in order to improve the delivery of services.
"Last week I introduced a bill that would create a chief information officer at the VA," Sen. Cruz said. "The VA has long had real challenges with information technology. And IT, with an IT system, that can't talk to itself, that is unreliable, that has enormous challenges. There is no senior executive service official individually responsible for being the chief information officer. Very few private companies would try to take on these kinds of challenges without a chief information officer empowered to direct the IT strategy. There are a number of things that can flow from that. One of the things that can flow from that - if you look at private hospitals, private hospitals are implementing real time location services for medical equipment, for medical devices, and what that enables is much greater efficiency. It enables avoiding some of the problems that come from not sterilizing equipment, not using the most up to date equipment. The VA has tried to do that, but it has had serious stumbles, and it has not rolled out well. We need to improve that. And one of the things that IT could've done, is help prevent the bogus bookkeeping. If you had an accurate and vigorous IT system that you could tell when appointments are schedule and when they go through, you would have real time monitoring. And so that's something I'm hopeful we'll see Republicans and Democrats coming together to help the VA continue to make real investments in IT, to improve the delivery of services."
One question Sen. Cruz received from an audience member was regarding expanding VA choice.
"Senator Cruz, we know that veterans' health choice is going to become a law. And that's a good start. Would you please pledge now that you would continue to fight to expand that and enforce that so veterans can receive the health care that they deserve?"
Sen. Cruz responded, "Absolutely, yes. And you look at the choice program right now, which started as a pilot. It's narrowly circumscribed, so you have for example rules requiring you've got to not have a facility within 40 miles of you. That really limits the ability of veterans to use choice. You have real problems with rates of reimbursement and with timeliness. You know when I meet with leaders at VA hospitals I talk about ‘alright how's the choice program going? How is implementation going?' One of the most frequent complaints is when you have private providers that participate and they are caring for vets, they submit bills and they don't get paid. They don't get paid for month, after month, after month, after month and that really limits uptake in participation in the program."
Sen. Cruz continued, "Another issue, a couple days ago I did a roundtable up in Dallas with a number of Veterans Leaders in north Texas. And I was asking them about their experience with choice, and some, some liked what they had experienced, others didn't, but one persistent problem, is you have sometimes vets who will get authorization to go to a private provider for a particular service, and they'll go, but then they'll have a follow up visit and if they haven't pre-cleared the follow-up visit, it won't get reimbursed, and vets end up getting hit with a bill for several thousand dollars. That's something that needs to be improved and expanded. I drew the analogy before, a camel's nose under the tent. I want to keep moving systematically to expand choice further and further until it is full and robust and I'm encouraged we can do that over time."
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