H.R. 6038 — Improving Veteran Access to Care Act

This section directs the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), not later than one year after enactment, to submit to the congressional Committees on Veterans’ Affairs a plan to improve health care appointment scheduling processes for VA patients and employees, including actions, resources, technology, process improvements, and timelines to enhance care delivery, access, customer service, and efficiency. The plan must address objectives to (1) develop a scheduling system enabling VA personnel and patients to view available appointments for primary care, mental health care, and specialty care; (2) develop a patient self-service platform to view, fully schedule (i.e., complete booking), request referrals for, cancel, or reschedule appointments; (3) enable telephone assistance for full appointment scheduling; and (4) implement related oversight, metrics, training, and coordination; if any objective or feature cannot be met, the Secretary must explain why and provide an alternative implementation approach. The Secretary must fully implement the plan not later than two years after plan submission, coordinating with the VA Electronic Health Record Modernization Program, and submit progress reports to the committees one and two years after plan submission detailing costs incurred and expected, deployment schedules, metrics achieved, challenges, and lessons learned. This section specifies that the plan must not preclude veterans' non-online scheduling options with facilities or providers.