VA must modernize veteran appointment scheduling within two years
S. 607 — Improving Veteran Access to Care Act · Filed by Maggie Hassan (D-NH) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 18, 2025 · Passed chamber
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What it does
This bill requires the VA to develop and submit a plan within one year to improve how veterans schedule medical appointments, including creating a self-service online scheduling system, a phone-based scheduler option, and better visibility of available appointments across all care types. The VA must fully implement the plan within two years and report progress annually, while ensuring compatibility with the VA's ongoing electronic health record modernization.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is a mandate for the VA to improve appointment scheduling through technology and process reform. It is a straightforward public-service modernization measure with no private carve-outs, tax provisions, or narrow beneficiaries.
What the text implies
- The bill's success depends on VA IT capacity and budget; no new appropriations are specified, so implementation may compete with other VA priorities.
- Coordination requirement with the VA's Electronic Health Record Modernization Program creates a dependency: scheduling improvements may be delayed if EHR deployment lags.
- The bill permits the Secretary to omit objectives if deemed infeasible, with only a written explanation required—implementation could fall short of stated goals without enforcement mechanism.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Veterans gain concrete, measurable improvements in healthcare access: self-service online scheduling, phone-based support, and transparent appointment availability. The bill removes administrative barriers to care without imposing new costs or restrictions on veterans, and includes a safeguard preserving non-digital scheduling options for those who prefer it.
Named in the bill
Department of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Electronic Health Record Modernization Program
Where it stands
3 cosponsors: 2 Republicans, 1 Democrats.
- Feb 18, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Feb 18, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs”
- Mar 11, 2025 — Hearing held · Congress.gov: “Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Hearings held”
- Jul 30, 2025 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute…”
- Dec 18, 2025 — Passed the Senate · Congress.gov: “Passed Senate with an amendment and an amendment to the Title by Unanimous Consent.”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $0 in lobbying spend. A filing names 33 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Maggie Hassan, the sponsor, reported $608,285 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Nebraska Hospital Association — $0 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 13, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (5,651 characters) on Jun 3, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 13, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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