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Today, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared, at the start of the subcommittee’s oversight hearing entitled, “Ensuring Timely Access: Challenges in VA Scheduling."

Good morning.

The Subcommittee will come to order.

I want to welcome our witnesses to discuss efforts to modernize VA’s appointment scheduling processes.

Ten years after the wait time scandal, it is still too difficult for veterans to get appointments in the Veterans Health Administration or in the community.

Some members of this Committee have been eager to get into arguments about VHA care versus community care.

I believe veterans should have all the information, and VA should respect their choices.

I can tell you in Montana, community care is an absolute necessity.

But the reality is, both systems are still far too bureaucratic and difficult to navigate.

It is also still too complicated for VA employees to manage scheduling.

These IT systems have not been a high priority, and the projects that are consuming the lion’s share of the IT budget do little to solve this problem.

I am glad to see our witnesses working on the Integrated Scheduling Solution, the Clinical Capacity Search Tool, and the Clinic Configuration Manager to improve VHA scheduling.

I question why the Department waited so long to start these projects and why some of them will take so many years to complete.

But without a doubt, the goals are worthy.

I expect our witnesses to stay the course and deliver these systems on-schedule and on-budget.

Our veterans would have been much better served if the VA had not abandoned the Medical Appointment Scheduling System (MASS) in 2019.

This project had implemented Epic’s scheduling system and patient portal in Columbus, Ohio, and they were working well.

But the VA leaders at the time made a special effort to eliminate it, paving the way for Cerner to duplicate the work and install an inferior system.

This was a disastrous decision that we are all still paying for.

I also expect our witnesses to explain how they are going to fully implement the External Provider Scheduling system, which includes the software of a company called Well Hive.

Well Hive enables “direct scheduling” which means VA schedulers no longer have to play phone tag for hours to hunt down open appointments with community care providers.

Instead, they can see each participating community care provider’s scheduling availability in real time, on one screen.

They can schedule the veteran’s desired appointment with one call.

Well Hive’s software has proven successful in the medical centers that have been permitted to use it.

According to VA’s own statistics, it has accelerated the overall community care referral and scheduling process from 26.6 to 17 days.

The status quo phone tag method takes days or weeks and many phone calls before a veteran can get scheduled.

I know many veterans who are watching this can relate.

According to VA’s website, Well Hive enables staff to schedule appointments in under six minutes.

The medical center employees have given it rave reviews during the Committee staff’s oversight visits.

It seems to be working.

Yet we continue to see VA make confusing decisions that hold the project back.

Early on, there were caps on how many schedulers at each medical center could use Well Hive.

More recently, the company has complained that its efforts to sign up new health care providers are restricted.

Now, VA tells us the Well Hive system will be turned off in four medical centers where it was already implemented, and the planned rollout in fiscal year 2025 will be dramatically scaled back.

I am well aware of the VHA budget shortfall.

I think the House made the right decision yesterday to get a complete explanation of the shortfall rather than hand over a $12 billion supplemental appropriation right away.

I have no doubt that Congress will get to the bottom of the situation and prevent any veteran’s care from being disrupted.

That being said, it would be incredibly shortsighted to cause lasting damage to this project with budget cuts that will quickly disappear everywhere else.

I have serious concerns that the current leaders of the Department of Veterans Affairs might be intentionally undermining this project—and making veterans’ health care slower and more difficult—out of a political hostility to community care.

I hope that is not case.

Today we are going to dig into these decisions and the thinking behind them.

Because veterans’ appointment scheduling is too important, and the status quo is too broken, to let any of the projects we are discussing today slip into failure or neglect.

With that, I yield to Ranking Member Cherfilus-McCormick for her opening statement.