Sponsor
The bill increases transparency and standardized oversight of military appointment access to help improve scheduling and resource decisions, at the cost of added administrative burden and the risk that metrics-driven behavior or misinterpretation could undermine care quality and trust.
Military service members, veterans, and their families will see publicly reported, standardized wait-time and referral-timeliness data, giving them clearer information about appointment access.
Congress, DoD leaders, and the public will get comparable year-to-year performance metrics that improve oversight and help target system-wide improvements in the military health system.
Service and facility leaders can use standardized scheduling and referral metrics to identify staffing and process bottlenecks and better inform workforce and resource decisions.
The Department of Defense/Defense Health Agency will face added data collection, validation, and publication costs and administrative burden, which could divert resources from direct care and impose costs on taxpayers.
Focusing on scheduling and referral timeliness may incentivize gaming or prioritizing metric-friendly cases over unmeasured aspects of care, risking worse outcomes for complex or chronic patients.
Publicly posted metrics could be misinterpreted if local context (case mix, specialty constraints) isn't provided, potentially undermining trust in certain facilities and producing unfair comparisons.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires the DoD to publish appointment-access metrics (booking-to-appointment days and one-business-day referral timeliness) as part of the annual TRICARE report.
Representative · D-CO
Requires the Department of Defense to publish specific appointment-access metrics for military medical treatment facilities as part of the annual TRICARE Program Evaluation Report. The new requirement mandates reporting the average number of days between booking and appointment and the share of referrals completed within one business day, in addition to existing core performance metrics. Makes those two access measures statutory requirements for the TRICARE Program Evaluation Report and directs the Secretary of Defense to post the specified appointment-related data on a public DoD website.
Official title: To amend title 10, United States Code, to direct the Secretary of Defense to include on a website of the Department of Defense certain information with respect to a patient booking an appointment for health care provided under the TRICARE program at a military medical treatment facility, and for other purposes.
Introduced July 22, 2026 by Joseph Neguse · Last progress July 22, 2026