VA Community Living Centers: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Oversight of Quality of Care

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides care to around 9,000 veterans each day in its 134 VA-operated nursing homes, called community living centers (CLC). VA has based its CLC oversight and quality improvement efforts on data from three sources: results of unannounced inspections, scores on clinical quality measures (such as residents with recent falls), and nurse staffing levels. GAO analyzed this data and found that, nationally, CLC performance generally improved on inspections and clinical quality measures, and staffing levels increased from fiscal years 2015 through 2019, the most recent complete data available.

In this white paper, the GAO makes three recommendations: for VA to update its policy and training documentation, to identify the quality standards CLCs are required to follow, and to prioritize development of a standard survey on CLC resident experiences.