HR6454-119

What This Bill Does

The bill requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish the Zero Suicide Initiative pilot within 180 days. VA must spend the first year on program development, planning, and site selection, then implement the Zero Suicide Institute curriculum at five VA medical centers, including one site serving rural or remote veterans. Each selected site must identify five to ten staff leaders who complete an organizational self-study, attend the two-day Zero Suicide Academy, create data plans, announce adoption of a suicide-care approach, survey staff comfort and competence, and develop training for screening, assessment, electronic health records, risk formulation, treatment, and care transitions. VA must consult HHS, NIH, NIMH, SAMHSA, VA suicide-prevention offices, institutions of higher education, educators, experts, veterans service organizations, professional associations, and the Zero Suicide Institute. Annual reports must compare screening, lethal-means counseling, referrals, safety planning, emergency department use, psychiatric hospitalizations, suicide attempts, and suicide deaths, followed by a final report on effectiveness, expansion, extension, or permanence.

Who Benefits and How

Veterans receiving care at participating VA medical centers benefit from more structured suicide-risk screening, lethal-means counseling, safety planning, high-risk outreach, and care-transition protocols. Rural or remote veterans benefit because one site must primarily serve that population. VA suicide-prevention leaders and outside experts gain data on whether the Zero Suicide model improves outcomes inside VA medical centers.

Who Bears the Burden and How

VA must select candidate sites within 180 days, final sites within 270 days, train staff leaders, implement new workflows, collect outcome data, submit annual reports, and prepare a final evaluation. Participating medical centers must allocate staff time to the academy, surveys, policy changes, EHR processes, data collection, and reporting. Congress must review recurring program reports.

Key Provisions

• Establishes a VA Zero Suicide Initiative pilot within 180 days.
• Requires five VA medical centers, including one rural or remote-serving site, to implement the Zero Suicide Institute curriculum.
• Requires five to ten staff leaders at each site to complete training, self-study, data planning, staff surveys, and suicide-care process changes.
• Requires annual reports comparing screening, counseling, referral, safety-planning, emergency, hospitalization, attempt, and death outcomes.
• Authorizes a five-year pilot with a possible two-year extension and requires a final report on effectiveness and expansion.