H.R. 3183 — SAFE STEPS for Veterans Act of 2025

This section provides a short title for the Act as the “Supporting Access to Falls Education and Prevention and Strengthening Training Efforts and Promoting Safety Initiatives for Veterans Act of 2025” or the “SAFE STEPS for Veterans Act of 2025”.

This section establishes the Office of Falls Prevention within the Veterans Health Administration, headed by a Chief Officer reporting to the Under Secretary for Health and located at the Department's Central Office. (The office monitors and improves falls prevention services for veterans—whose falls often lead to costly hospitalizations and injuries—develops standards of care, provides technical assistance and oversight to VA facilities and programs, distributes related resources, promotes research and education, coordinates home modification programs under 38 U.S.C. §1717(a)(2) (home health structural alterations) and chapter 21, and performs other duties as directed.) The Chief Officer must oversee a national public education campaign targeting at-risk veterans, families, and providers to reduce falls and promote VA benefits, devices, and services; and award grants or contracts for local campaigns. The Chief Officer must collaborate with VA's Office of Research and Development and the National Institute on Aging on evidence-based falls prevention research tailored to veterans (including those with service-connected disabilities, comorbidities, polypharmacy risks, or safe handling needs in non-specialized facilities), and the Secretary and Institute Director must form a joint eight-member expert panel (four appointees each) for recommendations on interventions such as home modifications.

This section (1) extends the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) mandate to provide nursing home care to veterans needing it for a service-connected disability or with a service-connected disability rated 70% or more who need such care through September 30, 2028 (from September 30, 2025); (2) requires that, for any such veteran in a VA nursing home determined by a physician to have fallen or been at risk of falling in the prior year, a licensed physical therapist or occupational therapist conduct a falls risk assessment and provide fall prevention services during the stay; and (3) adds the conduct of an annual falls risk assessment and provision of fall prevention services by such therapists to VA extended care services.