VA Health Care: VA Faces Challenges in Meeting Demand for Long-Term Care
Released: 2020-03-03T00:00:00

Letter

Background

VA provides or pays for long-term care—ranging from assistance with dressing and bathing to clinical care for spinal injuries or dementia— through three institutional and 11 noninstitutional programs. (See fig. 1 for a list of VA’s institutional and noninstitutional long-term care programs and app. I for brief descriptions of these programs.)

VA’s long-term care programs serve over 500,000 veterans with a wide range of characteristics and needs. Further, certain Community Nursing Homes, Adult Day Health Care, and Hospice and Respite Care programs have specially trained staff to serve veterans with dementia, and the Spinal Cord Injury and Disability Home Care program and certain VA Community Living Centers are equipped to serve veterans needing ventilator care.

All veterans enrolled in the VA health care system are eligible for VA’s basic medical benefits package, which includes coverage for certain institutional and noninstitutional long-term care services. A veteran’s eligibility for fully or partially covered nursing home care is determined by the veteran’s priority for care, which is generally based on the veteran’s service-connected disability status. VA must cover the full cost of nursing home care for veterans who need this care for a service-connected disability and for veterans with service-connected disabilities rated at 70 percent or more. Veterans’ placement into particular long-term care programs may depend on their clinical needs, disability ratings, preferences, and the availability of VA programs. When funds are limited, the agency may prioritize program placement based on veterans’ service- connected disability ratings. Decisions about which long-term care programs may be the best fit are made at the VA medical center (VAMC) level between VA providers, veterans, and their families.

Utilization of and Spending for VA Long-Term Care Have Increased in Recent Years and Are Projected to Increase

As we reported in February 2020, VA data shows that utilization of and spending for VA long-term care programs generally increased from fiscal years 2014 through 2018. Specifically, the number of veterans receiving care in VA’s long-term care programs increased 14 percent from fiscal years 2014 through 2018, from 464,071 to 530,327 veterans, while spending grew 33 percent from $6.8 billion to $9.1 billion. Further, we found that VA projects utilization and expenditures for long-term care to increase for most of the programs included in VA’s EHCPM from fiscal years 2017 through 2037. Specifically, over that time period VA’s model projects the following:

Utilization of long-term care—in terms of various VA workload units— is projected to grow in one of the two institutional programs and nine of the 10 noninstitutional programs included in the EHCPM from fiscal years 2017 through 2037.

Spending, which VA reports as expenditures, is projected to more than double from fiscal years 2017 through 2037, increasing from $6.9 billion to $14.3 billion. (See fig. 2.) VA also projects that the proportion of expenditures for institutional long-term care will decrease from 63 percent to 53 percent while the proportion of noninstitutional program expenditures is projected to grow from 37 percent to 47 percent in that same time period.

According to VA officials, these projected increases are due to a variety of factors, including that VA plans to continue expanding the availability of noninstitutional care, and plans on providing care to an increasing number of aging veterans and veterans rated in the highest service- connected disability groups. Officials also noted that expanding veterans’ access to noninstitutional care programs is less costly than institutional care, and veterans prefer to delay or reduce the amount of institutional care they receive. VA’s strategies to meet the growing demand for long- term care are operationalized by GEC at the program level and implemented at the regional and VAMC level.

VA Has Identified Several Key Challenges to Meeting the Demand for Long-Term Care, but Lacks Measurable Goals for Addressing Them

In our February 2020 report, we found that VA faces a number of key challenges in meeting veterans’ growing demand for long-term care: workforce shortages, geographic alignment of care, and difficulty meeting veterans’ needs for specialty care.

While GEC recognizes and has taken some steps to address the challenges it faces, it has not established measurable goals for its efforts to address these three key challenges:

GEC has not established measurable goals to address workforce shortages, such as staffing targets to address the waitlist for the Home-Based Primary Care program.

GEC has not established measurable goals for its efforts to address the geographic alignment of care, such as specific targets for providing long-term care within the Home Telehealth and Veteran Directed Care programs.

GEC has not established measurable goals for its efforts to address difficulties meeting veterans’ needs for specialty care, such as specific targets for the number of available ventilators or the number of caregivers educated to help veterans with dementia.

As we noted in our report, without measurable goals, VA is limited in its ability to better plan for and understand progress towards addressing the challenges it faces meeting veterans’ long-term care needs. To address this issue, we recommended that GEC develop measurable goals for its efforts to address these key long-term care challenges. VA concurred with this recommendation.

In our February 2020 report we also found that VA had identified, but had not planned to take steps to fully address, challenges at the VAMC level that affect VA’s ability to meet veterans’ long-term care needs:

VA identified that VAMCs do not have a consistent approach to managing VA’s 14 long-term care programs. At VAMCs where there are not GEC staff, long-term care programs could be run by one or more departments within the VAMC, for example the Nursing department or the Social Work department. GEC officials told us that this fragmentation hinders standardization and the ability to get veterans the appropriate care.

VA also identified that VAMCs use different approaches to assess the amount of noninstitutional long-term care services veterans need. While GEC has developed a tool to improve the consistency in these determinations, VA has not required the tool be used in all VAMCs, as of October 2019. As a result, decisions about the amount of services veterans receive may vary by VAMC.

To address these issues, we recommended that GEC leadership set time frames for and implement (1) a consistent GEC structure at the VAMC level and (2) VAMC-wide standardization of the tool for assessing noninstitutional program needs of veterans. VA concurred with our recommendations.

Chairwoman Brownley, Ranking Member Dunn, and Members of the Subcommittee, this completes my prepared statement. I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you may have at this time.

GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments

If you or your staff have any questions about this testimony, please contact A. Nicole Clowers, Managing Director, Health Care at (202) 512- 7114 or clowersa@gao.gov or Sharon Silas, Director, Health Care, at (202) 512-7114 or silass@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. In addition to the contacts named above, key contributors to this statement were Karin Wallestad (Assistant Director), Luke Baron (Analyst-in-Charge), Summar C. Corley, and Laurie Pachter. Also contributing to the underlying report for this statement were Kye Briesath, Vikki Porter, Corinne Quinones, and Jennifer Rudisill.

Appendix I: Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Institutional and Noninstitutional Long- Term Care Program Descriptions

Appendix I: Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Institutional and Noninstitutional Long- Term Care Program Descriptions This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately.