{"bills":[{"photos":{"featured":"https://assets.causes.com/bill/photo/placeholder-chamber-big.jpg","featured_large":"https://assets.causes.com/bill/photo/placeholder-chamber-big.jpg","shareable":"https://n.causes.com/share-images/bills/s471-114.png"},"introduced_on":"2015-02-12","title_override":"Should the VA Improve Its Coverage for Women?","summary_override":"This bill seeks to ensure that veterans’ healthcare is gender egalitarian by initiating a number of protocols to ensure that women veterans have access to the specific healthcare professionals and facilities that they need.

First, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs would have to ensure that meeting “gender-specific health-care needs” of veterans was part of its official standards. In its most important part of doing som the bill requires that, 540 days after it is passed, every VA facility have a gynecologist or obstetrician. It also authorizes a pilot program to increase the number of residencies and graduate education positions for gynecologists and obstetricians at VA facilities.

Next, the VA would have to issue a report on facilities that fail to provide enough of this specialized healthcare, the cost of updating them so that they do, how many of them exist and where these facilities are. The Secretary would also have to publish data on the performance of these facilities and their treatment of women online. The bill also authorizes a program for sharing information regarding the gendered healthcare available to veterans electronically that veterans could opt out of.

Finally, this bill orders the Comptroller General to initiate a study on women veterans’ health care. It would have to evaluate each VA medical center on:

Women’s wait times;
If it had a clinic for women or other gender-specific facilities and procedures;
The number of obstetricians and gynecologists and other women’s healthcare specialists the hospital has;
The extent to which the hospital does training on women’s health;
The difference in results for men and women;
Security and privacy measures at the hospital;
The degree to which the facility is in touch with the Center for Women Veterans of the Department;
The center’s outreach to women veterans;
Collaboration between the center and other groups aimed at providing healthcare to women veterans;
The effectiveness of Patient Aligned Care Teams in helping women.

","official_title":"A bill to improve the provision of health care for women veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for other purposes.","short_title":"Women Veterans Access to Quality Care Act of 2015","popular_title":null,"short_summary":"Women Veterans Access to Quality Care Act of 2015\n\nDirects the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to: (1) establish standards to ensure that all VA medical facilities have the structural characteristics necessary to adequately meet the gender-specific health care needs of veterans at such facilities, including privacy, safety, and dignity; (2) integrate such standards into its prioritization methodology with respect to requests for funding major medical facility projects and major medical facility leases; and (3) report on such standards, including regarding the facilities that fail to meet such standards and the costs of projects and leases required to meet them.\n\nRequires the VA to: (1) use health outcomes for women veterans furnished health care by the the VA in evaluating the performance of VA medical center directors, (2) publish on its website information on such performance and on health outcomes for women veterans for each VA medical facility, (3) ensure that every VA medical c...","summarized":true,"cost":null,"cost_commentary":"A CBO estimate is unavailable.","impact":"Women veterans, veterans, gender non-conforming veterans, VA medical centers, VA staff, and medical students.","argument_for":"This bill would ensure that women veterans have access to the medical care that they need at VA centers. 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Should the VA Improve Its Coverage for Women?