1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Veterans Health Administration Caregiver Retention and Eligibility Determination Act of 2019 or the VHA CRED Act of 2019 . 2. Findings; Sense of Congress (a) Findings Congress makes the following findings: (1) A report prepared by the Comptroller General of the United States in 2019 entitled Veterans Health Administration: Greater Focus on Cre­den­tial­ing Needed to Prevent Disqualified Providers from Delivering Patient Care (GAO–19–6) (in this subsection referred to as the Report ) troublingly found that facilities of the Veterans Health Administration lack adequate safeguards to ensure that veterans are not treated by health care providers whose licenses have been revoked or surrendered for cause. (2) The Report reviewed 57 health care providers at facilities of the Veterans Health Administration across the United States who had an issue reported on the National Practitioner Data Bank, such as prior instances of poor patient care, disregard for public safety, substance misuse, or unprofessional conduct. (3) Although the Veterans Health Administration requires all health care providers to be credentialed by personnel of the Administration prior to providing care to veterans, the Report revealed disturbing lapses and inconsistencies in adherence to that policy due in part to a lack of mandatory training for credentialing personnel. (4) In addition to endangering the care of veterans at facilities of the Veterans Health Administration, the hiring of health care providers who lack proper credentials wastes time and financial resources of the Administration. (b) Sense of Congress It is the sense of Congress that— (1) without the implementation of uniform policies for credentialing health care providers and a periodic review of all provider credentials, the Veterans Health Administration will continue to hire or retain providers who lack proper credentials to the detriment of patients seeking the services of the Administration