Sponsors
The bill expands veterans' timely access to underused DoD medical capacity and improves joint training, IT interoperability, and oversight, while creating added taxpayer and implementation costs, some administrative burdens, and the risk of temporary care disruptions or patient confusion during investigations and referrals.
Veterans in areas with underused DoD hospitals will gain increased and faster access to care because the VA can refer enrolled veterans to DoD facilities with excess capacity.
Veterans and clinicians will face fewer administrative barriers because cross‑credentialing and expedited base access let VA and DoD clinicians jointly treat veterans more quickly and reduce referral delays.
Hospitals, health systems, and veterans will benefit from improved medical records sharing, clearer workload attribution, and better referral/billing coordination due to required IT integration between DoD and VA.
Taxpayers may face increased costs from using DoD capacity, funding IT integration, and covering implementation or reimbursement obligations, even though briefings must report those costs.
Hospitals, health systems, and clinicians could incur added administrative burdens and staffing costs from implementing cross‑credentialing, base access procedures, and IT changes.
Veterans may temporarily lose access to specific referred providers if the VA suspends referrals during misconduct investigations, reducing continuity of care for affected patients.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires DoD and VA to develop facility-level plans to expand medical resource sharing, cross-credential clinicians, integrate IT, and improve veteran access where military facilities have excess capacity.
Requires the Secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs to create and implement facility-level action plans at covered DoD and VA medical facilities to expand resource sharing, increase veteran access where military medical facilities have excess capacity, and boost training case volume for military and VA medical education. Plans must include clinician cross-credentialing, expedited access to installations for VA staff and enrolled veterans, a designated facility coordinator, performance monitoring, and prioritized IT/system integration for seamless information sharing and billing. Plans must include oversight for adverse medical events and complaints, workload attribution when care is provided across systems, and must be approved locally and by VA–DoD Joint Executive Committee co-chairs before submission to Congress. The legislation is primarily procedural and operational, directing agencies to develop and coordinate implementation details rather than providing new funding in the text provided.
Introduced December 8, 2025 by Jerry Moran · Last progress December 8, 2025