Vet HP Act

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous material on H.R. 1271.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1271) to establish in the Department of Veterans Affairs a pilot program instituting a clinical observation program for pre-med students preparing to attend medical school.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1271, the Vet HP Act. The Department of Veterans Affairs reported last month that it has 48,985 vacancies. That means about 10 percent of the positions at VA are unfilled.

Sadly, a majority of these vacancies are Veterans Health Administration vacancies. VA does not have enough doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other medical

providers and support staff to make sure veterans have timely access to the high quality healthcare delivered by VA. With shortages in areas like mental health and primary care, it can become increasingly difficult to maintain a facility's efficiency and quality. That is why it is so important that VA does everything it can to fill every last vacancy.

The committee is not blind to the challenge of meeting this laudable goal. Hospital systems throughout the country also face health provider shortages. Rural areas and some urban areas are often the most in need of providers. However, that should not be an excuse for inaction, and relying solely on community providers who also face shortages and lack the expertise and cultural competency to provide for veterans' specific healthcare needs is an incomplete, problematic, and high-cost solution.

The VA must work to recruit and retain talented and mission-driven clinicians and employees who are guided by one goal: to provide the best possible care to veterans when they need it.

The bill offered by Congresswoman Kaptur from Ohio is a creative and necessary step towards ensuring VA is able to fill each vacant position. The Vet HP Act seeks to expose undergraduate students considering careers in medicine to experience the VA healthcare environment directly. By allowing undergraduates to observe the work of staff at VA medical centers firsthand, the department can begin recruiting early--by sowing interest in students about the VA's mission and the healthcare, research, academic, and professional opportunities available to clinicians at VA medical centers. As an educator of 70 percent of the Nation's healthcare providers, VA can create an early familiarity with VA among students thinking about or preparing for careers in medicine.

Our Nation's future healthcare providers may be more likely to choose residencies at academic affiliates of VA medical centers and careers at VA if they are more familiar with VA's mission and are able to observe the improvements VA clinicians are able to make in the lives of those who have served our Nation.

Moreover, as the veteran population becomes increasingly more diverse, VA should strive to recruit students from backgrounds as diverse as the military and veteran population so that VA staff and clinicians reflect that growing diversity and are better equipped and able to understand the needs of the veterans they serve.

In an effort to create a pipeline of diverse, mission-focused students, this bill focuses specifically on students who graduated from high schools in health professional shortage areas, students who attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other institutions of higher education that serve minorities, and first-generation college students.

Giving students this exposure to VA's mission will help address the VA's 48,985 vacancies so that it can continue to provide the healthcare veterans need.

I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who is my good friend and the author of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my colleague, the ranking member, about our effort to insert 1,500 medical residencies into the Choice bill. That was one of the great accomplishments of that particular Congress.

I would point out that we still face shortages nationally of physicians and specialists, and we face a great challenge with our medical workforce and our healthcare workforce, and that impacts the VA's ability to fill these positions.

I particularly want to highlight the gentlewoman from Ohio's comments about young people who do not have the connections to medical professionals, or they are not necessarily connected to the professional segments of our society where they might be exposed to what it means to be a medical professional and what it means to serve the VA's mission. I think that her insights and her experience and what she brings to this bill is a tremendous understanding of the need for those of our young people who come from lower incomes or who come from segments of society that could be left behind. We have Americans of great ability whom we need to recruit and expose to the opportunities that await them in organizations like the VA.

Let me just say that filling these vacancies is going to be a high priority of the committee and to poke, prod, cajole, and urge the VA to do what it needs to do to reform itself in order to make sure that these positions are filled. Let me emphasize that these positions are funded, that these are funded positions. They are empty, and that, to me, also indicates that we have a workforce training challenge before us.

H.R. 1271, offered by my colleague, Ms. Kaptur, is one of the necessary steps that we need to take in order to fill those vacancies.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in passing H.R. 1271, the Vet HP Act, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Takano for his staunch leadership for veterans in so many arenas and for moving this bill through his committee. I also want to thank Ranking Member Phil Roe for his continued bipartisan support and encouragement.

H.R. 1271, the Vet Health Professionals Act, Vet HP Act for short, also called the Veterans-Specific Education for Tomorrow's Health Professionals Act; I am honored to speak on its behalf this evening.

By expanding opportunities for future physicians interested in serving our Nation's veterans, this legislation will lay the groundwork to help fill, as was mentioned earlier, the Department of Veterans Affairs' nearly 50,000 medical vacancies by creating a viable pipeline for future physicians.

The Vet HP Act creates a 3-year pilot program that will operate in at least five VA medical centers for premed students to gain clinical observation experience, allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of veterans' specific health needs and experiences. We have heard about some of those this evening.

Several years ago, three premed students--and I will put their names into the Record--Andrew Frank, Seamus Caragher, and Michael McNamara-- highlighted to my team that included Andrea Kaman, Nora Sarsour, Carrie Swope, and more recently Margaret McGuinness, our legislative assistants, the struggles that disadvantaged minority and other young people who lack personal connections face as they apply for medical school.

Health schools recommend or require clinical observation hours, but there is no formal process to apply for these hours. Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, in the field of neuropsychiatry it is particularly difficult. Opportunities to shadow are limited and are often based on where you go to school or whom you know.

Students who attend schools outside major cities as well as those whose families lack connections to the medical community find it harder to shadow and are disadvantaged in medical school admissions. This places an unfair burden on otherwise qualified students who come from less affluent communities or even rural areas.

Through their own struggle to access clinical observation experience, the students realized an immense opportunity. This bill prioritizes students in medically underserved areas, first-generation college students, students referred by minority-serving institutions, and veterans themselves.

It also prioritizes training for students who specialize in health professions where there is an identified staffing shortage. This important bill will help narrow the professional gap and ensure we are training premed students in careers that are in demand and necessary. For example, the three VA medical centers that service our constituents in Ohio are located in Cleveland, Ohio; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and the city of Detroit. They currently have--this is an amazing number--542 medical and dental staff vacancies.

How are we to serve veterans when we don't have enough doctors and medical professionals to do it?

This bill creates an important shadowing opportunity for health students and will help strengthen the workforce with a pathway going into the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Importantly, premed students in this pilot program will gain a deeper understanding of veterans' specific health needs and experiences, which is critical for health professionals who treat veterans.

One of our top responsibilities as a Congress is to ensure that America's veterans receive top quality and timely healthcare from highly trained professionals. This bill furthers that effort, and I am pleased it will get a vote this evening.

I would like to thank, again, Chairman Takano and Ranking Member Roe for bringing this bill to the floor.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the bill's passage to strengthen medical care inside our veterans' healthcare system and help the future be built through our work here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1271, the Veterans- Specific Education for Tomorrow's Health Professionals--or Vet HP--Act. The bill would create a pilot program to provide undergraduate students with a clinical observation experience at Department of Veterans Affairs' medical centers.

This bill is sponsored by Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio. I appreciate her efforts to support aspiring medical students by giving them a window into the healthcare profession. This bill would further VA's mission to educate the Nation's future clinicians by giving those who have expressed interest in the medical field an early introduction to the VA healthcare system.

It is my sincere hope that, if enacted, this pilot program would inspire the students it serves to pursue careers serving veteran patients. While this bill did not move through regular order in the committee this Congress, it did move through regular order last Congress where it was supported by various veteran service organizations.

Mr. Speaker, I was proud to work with my Democratic colleagues to get this bill passed through the House last year, and I am pleased to do so again here today. I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I strongly support this bill. I have spent much of my time over the years mentoring students both in high school, college, and in medical school. I have taught on the clinical faculty at East Tennessee State University College of Medicine.

I tell the students: Look, you really need to think about going into medicine if you like to work nights, weekends, and holidays.

That is not usually how I start the conversation. But I look back as a young man when I started, and I ask myself, having now been serving in the U.S. Congress, what would I do if I had those choices all over again?

Unequivocally, I would go back to the examining room and back to the operating room and take care of patients. It is a phenomenal way to help people. I think we have to share that.

I am a first-generation college graduate in my family, as many of us are who serve in this body, and I want to thank both the chairman for his tremendous support for medical education in the Choice bill that we passed--it is hard to believe--5 years ago, Mr. Speaker, when the scandal in Phoenix occurred. We put in that bill 1,500 residency slots at VAs in primary care so that we would encourage those young doctors to stay where they are training. Many of us will do that; we will stay where we have done our training.

So I want to thank Congresswoman Kaptur for her interest in this. I thank the students she brought up. Those are the future doctors who are going to be caring for all of us.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this bill, I urge my colleagues to, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1271, the Vet HP Act.

The Vet HP Act would be a significant advancement for two critical issues burdening Eastern Kansans.

My district, being both rural and home to tens of thousands of veterans, is a medically underserved district. With both VA and rural hospitals lacking a steady pipeline of health professionals, access to quality health care is not guaranteed for many of these folks back home.

Secondly, aspiring health professionals from underserved areas are not afforded the same opportunities for clinical observation hours as medical school applicants in major cities, putting them at a disadvantage during the admissions process.

The Vet HP Act would provide an opportunity for health students to gain clinical observation hours at VA hospitals, prioritizing students in health professional shortage areas, first-generation college students, students referred by minority-serving institutions and veterans, and, importantly, students who wish to train and stay in health professions experiencing staff shortages.

This is a true two-birds-one-stone approach. Across the country we have aspiring health professionals who lack opportunity, and we have VA and rural hospitals desperately in need of a health professional pipeline. The Vet HP Act is a massive step forward for both issues.

I urge passage of this common-sense, bipartisan bill.

Mr. President, I understand there are two bills at the desk due a second reading en bloc.

In order to place the measures on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to further proceeding en bloc.