24 U.S.C. § 413 — Services provided to residents

(a) Services provided: Except as subsections (b), (c), and (d) provide, a Retirement Home resident receives the services the Chief Operating Officer authorizes. (b) Medical and dental care: The Retirement Home must provide for residents' overall health care needs in a high-quality, cost-effective way, including on-site primary care, medical care, and a continuum of long-term care services. Residents must receive appropriate non-emergency medical and dental services, medications, and transportation, all at no cost to residents. If a resident needs "secondary and tertiary" hospital-level care not available at a Retirement Home facility, the Retirement Home must try to get it, where available, through an agreement with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs or the Secretary of Defense at a facility that Secretary runs. Except as subsection (d) allows, the Retirement Home is not responsible for costs a resident incurs by using a private medical facility for that care instead. The Retirement Home may not build an acute-care facility. (c) Availability of licensed practitioners. (1) To meet residents' health care needs under subsection (b), each Retirement Home facility must have appropriate licensed practitioners — as determined under paragraph (2) — available during the facility's daily business hours, and on an on-call basis at other times. (2) Following the accrediting organization's standards under section 411(g), the Chief Operating Officer, working with the Medical Director, must make sure practitioners' skills, experience, and availability match what residents of the facility need. (d) Transportation to medical care outside Retirement Home facilities. (1) For each Retirement Home facility, the Retirement Home must provide daily scheduled transportation to nearby medical facilities its residents use. Based on a determination of medical need, it may also provide unscheduled transportation for a resident to any medical facility within 30 miles, to get necessary and urgent medical care. (2) The Retirement Home may not charge a resident a fee for transportation provided under this subsection.