H.R. 2970 — National Veterans Advocate Act of 2025

This section revises the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) Office of Patient Advocacy—currently within the Office of the Under Secretary for Health and tasked with overseeing patient advocates who resolve veterans' health care complaints, manage the Patient Advocate Tracking System, and ensure related training—to establish it as an independent Office of the National Veterans’ Advocate reporting directly to the Secretary. (1) Designates a National Veterans’ Advocate as head, appointed by the Secretary, reporting directly to the Secretary, and compensated at the highest Senior Executive Service rate under 5 U.S.C. §5382; (2) replaces references to "patient advocate" and "Director" with "veteran advocate" and "National Veterans’ Advocate," respectively; (3) expands functions to include monitoring VA processes, making recommendations to Congress on efficiency and veteran care, identifying veteran problems with VA, proposing administrative and legislative changes, and managing department-wide casework; (4) enhances the required information technology system (due within 18 months of enactment) to enable electronic filing of complaints or casework forms for rapid local advocate assignment and status viewing; (5) requires biannual reports to congressional Veterans’ Affairs Committees (March 30 and September 30) with independent legislative recommendations on health outcomes, care quality, benefits, and cost efficiency—unreviewable by the Secretary prior to submission and posted publicly on the office website—plus a dedicated public website for the IT system; (6) establishes a Deputy National Veterans’ Advocate in each Veterans Integrated Service Network to manage casework staff; (7) adds to facility-level veteran advocate duties identifying problems in hospital care, medical services, nursing home care, and burial benefits and developing recommendations; and (8) requires annual training for advocates with curriculum developed by specified VA officials and veterans service organizations, covering policy, crisis management, health care, and other topics determined by the Secretary.