Helping Ensure Accountability, Leadership, and Trust in Tribal Healthcare Act
A BILL
To amend the Indian Health Care Improvement Act to improve access to tribal health care by providing for systemic Indian Health Service workforce and funding allocation reforms, and for other purposes.
Sec. 2 Findings
Congress finds the following:
The United States Government has a treaty obligation to provide health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives.
The Indian Health Service is the Federal agency that is entrusted to carry out this obligation.
Access to high quality health care is critical for strong and vibrant tribal communities in the Great Plains Area and throughout the United States.
In 2010, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs published a report titled “In Critical Condition: The Urgent Need to Reform the Indian Health Service’s Aberdeen Area”, which detailed deficiencies, abuses, and malfeasance within the Aberdeen Area of the Indian Health Service, now called the Great Plains Area.
In 2015 and 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services conducted surveys of Indian Health Service hospitals in the Great Plains Area and found serious structural deficiencies that put patients’ health and safety in immediate jeopardy.
The Indian Health Service’s failures in the Great Plains Area have resulted in a severe reduction in access to emergency care, needlessly long wait times, patient suffering, low quality of life, and several tragic deaths.
The Indian Health Service is in need of comprehensive reform that will hold its management and employees accountable, foster strong and capable agency leadership, and restore tribal members’ trust in the care it delivers.