Congress Questions Indian Health Service Staff, Management

Press Release

Members of Congress on Tuesday questioned the longstanding staffing and management shortcomings that have led to poor health care services at government-run facilities caring for Native Americans across the country.

The hearing in Washington of the House subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs focused on proposed legislation that would expand the authority of the Indian Health Service to remove or demote employees and would also allow it to offer incentives to recruit well-trained administrators and health care providers. This was the second time in less than a month that the IHS' top leader, principal deputy director Mary Smith, tribal leaders and health care advocates testified before members of Congress regarding proposed measures to overhaul the embattled agency.

"We are here because of a crisis," said U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem, a Republican from South Dakota who is sponsoring the legislation. "The Indian Health Service is beyond broken, and fixing it is literally a matter of life and death."

Noem's bill and another proposal introduced in the U.S. Senate come after health inspectors over the past 14 months have uncovered serious quality-of-care deficiencies at hospitals run by the IHS in South Dakota and Nebraska. Smith said the agency faces "severe operational and staffing challenges."

"We welcome this attention and momentum that it creates for lasting quality improvements for these facilities because we are on the front lines of medical care in some of the most remote parts of our country," Smith said.

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