HEALTH CARE QUALITY ASSURANCE ACTIVITIES.

SEC. 201. HEALTH CARE QUALITY ASSURANCE ACTIVITIES. (a) Actions To Improve Quality Assurance Activities.— Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall take actions to improve the operation of health-care quality assurance programs and activities in the Veterans’ Administration, including actions to achieve the following purposes: (1) Upgrading the Office of Quality Assurance within the Department of Medicine and Surgery Central Office and assigning responsibility for risk-management activities (to be carried out with the concurrence of the General Counsel) to it. (2) Expanding, and assigning higher priority and greater resources to, quality-assurance programs and activities at each Veterans’ Administration health-care facility, including implementation of the review (known as “occurrence screening”) of patient records for adverse events which are not the natural consequence of the patient’s disease, injury, or treatment and the maximum use of the facility’s computerized management information system for such activities. (3) Upgrading and expanding the office of the Medical Inspector in the Department of Medicine and Surgery Central Office, including increasing the number of employees assigned to such office on a full-time basis, so as to ensure that each medical inspection carried out by that office includes at least one such full-time employee and otherwise ensuring such adequate numbers of, and such skills and training on the part of, the employees assigned to that office as are necessary to ensure the independence, objectivity, and accountability of that office. (4) Upgrading and expanding the activities of the Veteran’ Administration’s Office of Inspector General in overseeing, monitoring, and evaluating the operations of the Department of Medicine and Surgery’s quality-assurance programs and activities and its Medical Inspector office so as to provide the Chief Medical Director, the Administrator, and the Congress with clear and objective assessments of the effectiveness of those 102 STAT. 509programs and operations, including ensuring such numbers of, and such skills and training on the part of, employees assigned to the Office of the Inspector General as are necessary to carry out such oversight, monitoring, and evaluation effectively. (b) Report.— Not later than 75 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall submit to the Committees on Veteran’ Affairs of the Senate and the House of Representatives, a report describing the actions taken pursuant to subsection (a), including reports of the Chief Medical Director and the Inspector General of the Veteran’ Administration on such actions, and any future actions planned (and a timetable therefor) in connection with such actions. The report shall include— (1) the Administrator’s views on (A) the effectiveness of quality assurance and risk management and medical inspection programs and activities in the Department of Medicine and Surgery and of the oversight, monitoring, and evaluation of those programs and activities before the implementation of the actions described in the preceding sentence, and (B) how those actions will improve the effectiveness of these programs and activities; and (2) a description of actions that have been or will be taken (and the justification for those actions) by the Administrator, the Inspector General, and the Chief Medical Director, as appropriate, to make other improvements in such programs and activities and the overnight, monitoring, and evaluation therefor.