Sponsors (20)
The bill improves how TRICARE beneficiaries can report and track access problems and boosts transparency and accountability for military treatment facilities, at the cost of added DoD administrative burden and risks of digital exclusion and facility reputational pressure.
TRICARE beneficiaries (service members, dependents, and families) can file complaints online, track their status, and have issues routed promptly to DoD patient advocates, making it easier to report access problems and get faster individual assistance.
Congress and oversight bodies get quarterly aggregated data and annual facility-level reports on access complaints, increasing transparency and enabling system-level oversight of military treatment facilities.
Facilities must provide summaries of corrective steps, which can drive improvements in appointment systems and administrative processes and reduce delays for beneficiaries.
Beneficiaries with limited internet access or low digital literacy (including some military families and older dependents) may be disadvantaged if filing is primarily digital.
Setting up and operating the digital complaint and reporting system will raise DoD administrative costs, potentially diverting resources from direct care or other programs.
Publishing facility-level complaint breakdowns could create reputational pressure on smaller facilities and prompt them to allocate staff/time toward reporting and reputational management rather than clinical care.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires DoD to build a digital complaint system for TRICARE-eligible patients at military treatment facilities, aggregate complaints, and report facility-level results to Congress.
Official title: To require the Secretary of Defense to establish a digital system for the submission of complaints relating to access issues at military medical treatment facilities, and for other purposes.
Introduced December 17, 2025 by Steven Horsford · Last progress December 17, 2025
Requires the Department of Defense to create a digital complaint and tracking system for TRICARE-enrolled beneficiaries who receive care at military medical treatment facilities. The system must allow patients to file electronic complaints, view complaint status, forward complaints to patient advocates, aggregate data quarterly for the Defense Health Agency, and produce annual reports to congressional armed services committees with facility-level breakdowns and summaries of corrective actions. The system must be established within 18 months of enactment and the first annual report is due by the first March 1 after system establishment.