On Saturday (12 Aug), President Trump signed into Law the “VA Choice and Quality Employment Act of 2017“. The law provides funding for a shortfall to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Choice Program – a community care program designed to provide access to health care for veterans facing long wait times or travel far distances for their health care appointments. The bill authorizes $2.1 billion in additional funds for the Veterans Choice Program (VCP). The program, which was scheduled to end in August 2017, has been extended for an additional six months. The new law also improves hiring authorities for VA and authorizes the department to enter into 28 new leases for medical clinics and research.
The law provides for:
- Expanded authority to declare shortage category positions.
- An Executive Management Fellowship Program to enable training of VA employees in the private sector and employees from the private sector to train in VA.
- Annual performance plans for political appointees.
- Reappointment of former VA career and career conditional employees in a position one grade higher than they last held.
- A technical expert career track that would allow advancement without the need to move to a supervisory position.
- Excepted service appointments of students and recent graduates, leading to conversion to a career or career conditional appointment.
- Establishment of a recruiting database covering every vacancy in the department, with the ability to select applicants for positions other than the one for which they originally applied.
- Training for human resources professionals of the Veterans Health Administration on how to best recruit and retain employees of the Veterans Health Administration, including with respect to any recruitment and retention matters that are unique to the Veterans Health Administration under Chapter 74 of title 38, United States Code, or other provisions of law.
- Standardized exit surveys to be voluntarily completed by career and noncareer employees and executives of the department who voluntarily separate.
- Expansion of direct hire authority for positions where there is a shortage of highly qualified candidates.
Click on the FACT SHEET to read more on the new law.