Sponsors (9)
The bill improves veterans' access and choice through enforceable appointment timing and facility-level transparency, but imposes administrative costs and risks misleading performance signals and morale problems at some centers.
Veterans will have clearer, enforceable timing expectations for appointments, improving timely access to VA and community care.
Veterans and prospective patients will be able to compare facility-level performance by care category and State, enabling more informed choices about where to seek care.
Public transparency from facility rankings and quarterly reports will create accountability that can motivate underperforming centers to improve scheduling and resource allocation.
VA and facilities will face increased administrative workload and implementation costs to prepare detailed quarterly, facility-level reports, potentially diverting resources from direct care.
Publicly ranking medical centers could stigmatize lower-ranked facilities and demoralize staff, complicating recruitment and retention and possibly affecting care quality.
Rigid timing sub-standards (e.g., three-business-day and seven-calendar-day measures) may be hard to meet for high-demand or complex specialties and risk producing misleading performance signals that don't reflect case complexity.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires VA to set, publish, and report on a timing standard for referral-to-appointment intervals and post quarterly and annual performance data publicly.
Official title: To require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish a comprehensive standard for timing between referrals and appointments for care from the Department of Veterans Affairs and to submit a report with respect to that standard, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 6, 2026 by Scott Franklin · Last progress April 6, 2026
Requires the Department of Veterans Affairs to set a clear timing standard for how quickly veterans must receive appointments after a referral, whether the care is at a VA facility or via community care. The VA must publish the standard (and any updates) publicly and report to Congress quarterly and annually on performance versus the standard, with detailed breakdowns by facility, care type, and two sub-standards (three business days for facility scheduling and seven calendar days for community care). All reports must be posted publicly on a Veterans Health Administration website.