Sec. 102. Improvement of workforce training and team models to meet the needs of older veterans
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The Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall expand the Rural Interdisciplinary Team Training program of the Department of Veterans Affairs to not fewer than one rural site in each Veterans Integrated Service Network of the Department and ensure access at such sites to learning opportunities through the Geriatric Scholars Program of the Department. The Secretary shall provide continuing professional education for clinical staff of the Department who provide care for veterans with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The Secretary shall implement the continuing professional education required under paragraph
(1)in consultation with the Office of Rural Health of the Department of Veterans Affairs established under section 7308 of title 38, United States Code, in order to ensure equitable access to learning opportunities for employees of the Department in rural and highly rural areas. The Secretary shall expand the Geriatrics Patient Aligned Care Team model and the geriatric and palliative specialty services of the Department of Veterans Affairs— to every medical center of the Department; to any community-based outpatient clinic at which such expansion is determined by the Secretary to be feasible and needed; and to provide access to all veterans that need those services, including through implementing Geriatric and Palliative Specialty Consultative Clinical Resource Hubs to meet the needs of the aging veteran population. The Secretary may waive the application of the requirements under paragraph (1)(A) with respect to a medical center if the Secretary determines that the medical center does not have the capacity or need to implement a Geriatrics Patient Aligned Care Team model or to provide geriatric and palliative specialty services, as the case may be. The Secretary shall conduct a study on the variations in the structure and model consistency of the Geriatrics Patient Aligned Care Team model and delivery and utilization of geriatric and palliative care throughout the Department and how those variations impact quality of care and patient outcomes. Not later than two years after the date of the enactment of this Act, and not less frequently than annually thereafter for the following five years, the Secretary shall submit to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs of the Senate and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs of the House of Representatives a report on the implementation of this section. The Secretary shall include in the report required by paragraph
(1)an identification of any medical center of the Department in receipt of a waiver under subsection (c)(2) and the reason for the waiver. In this section, the terms rural and highly rural have the meanings given those terms under the Rural-Urban Commuting Areas
(RUCA)coding system of the Department of Agriculture.