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Washington, D.C. - Today, the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs held a full committee hearing entitled, "VA 2030: A Vision for the Future of VA."

Below are Ranking Member Rep. Phil Roe's, M.D. (R-Tenn.), opening remarks:  

Opening Remarks As Prepared for Delivery:

With the exception of this morning’s joint hearing, this is the Committee’s first hearing of the 116th Congress.

I applaud you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing and for ensuring right-out-of-the-gate that our work is forward-thinking.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is at a critical juncture.

The access and accountability crisis of 2014 brought VA to the forefront of our national consciousness and ushered in a season of change that has left no facet of VA untouched.  

Last Congress saw major pieces of legislation enacted to fundamentally transform:

-  how VA provides care to veteran patients;

- how VA makes decisions about modernizing and realigning medical facilities;

- how VA processes disability claims appeals;

- how VA recruits and retains medical professionals and support staff;

- how and for how long VA administers GI bill benefits;  and

- how employees found responsible for poor performance or misconduct are held accountable.

That is to say nothing of the significant strides that were made with respect to electronic health record modernization and interoperability with the Department of Defense.

This Congress our focus will need to remain squarely on how these major initiatives are being implemented and how VA is preparing for the revolution they represent.

Our work in the last two years set the stage for what VA will look like and how VA will function a decade from now.

But, as the saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, you will probably end up somewhere else. 

It is incumbent on all of us - and especially on you, Mr. Secretary - to cast a strong vision for VA’s future; to put the right processes and the right people in place to enact that vision; and to remain steady in the face of the stumbling blocks and struggles that are inevitable when change of the size and scale we are talking about today is concerned.

And, I want to note, that change will come not just from VA but from veterans themselves.

In the year 2030, the veteran population will look markedly different than it does today.

There will be fewer veterans overall but there will be more veterans who are women and more veterans who are racial minorities.

There will also be more veterans living and working in the South and the West by 2030 than we see today.

These demographic changes are significant and VA is going to have to start preparing for them today if the Department stands any chance of being prepared for them tomorrow.

That is why I believe so strongly in the need for expedient implementation of the Asset and Infrastructure Review portion of the MISSION Act.

A rapidly changing veteran population necessitates a rapidly changing VA.

AIR is specifically structured to assist VA in making those changes and to ensure that those changes are made through an objective, transparent, fully data- and consensus-driven process rather than by bureaucrats behind closed doors.

I urge you in the strongest terms, Mr. Secretary, to not delay AIR implementation and to work with this Committee on any legal impediments to swift implementation of AIR.

It is perhaps your greatest tool in preparing for VA 2030.

I want to end with a quick note on information technology before yielding. 

In the year 2030, if all goes well, VA will have just finished the EHR Modernization and have a seamless health record exchange with DoD.

The EHR's developmental and operational costs will be predictable, because VA will have shifted most of them to Cerner.

But 11 years is a lifetime for the software industry, and the EHR is just one element—albeit a big element—of VA’s overall health IT.  

We need to stay focused on the ultimate goal - interoperability.

When the Cerner decision was originally announced, I called on Secretary Shulkin to implement the new EHR inside of a world-class interoperability platform, not to build an interoperability function inside an EHR.

I believe that even more strongly today.

The partnership with Apple in the Health app is a great example of an interoperability solution that works just as well today with VistA as it will in the future with Cerner.

I think VA should incorporate an interoperability strategy in any kind of roadmap for the future and I look forward to hearing this afternoon about how VA intends to do just that.