WASHINGTON — Maryland’s entire congressional delegation, joined by Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, is asking the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Pentagon to pick Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda as a demonstration site for a new law meant to open more military hospital capacity to veterans.
In a Nov. 6 letter, the lawmakers urged the VA-Defense Department Health Executive Committee to designate Walter Reed as a demonstration location when it carries out Section 731 of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, titled “Improvement of Availability of Care for Veterans from Facilities and Providers of the Department of Defense.” The letter is addressed to the committee’s co-chairs, VA Under Secretary for Health Joe Figueroa and Keith Bass, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.
The effort was led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Sarah Elfreth, a Democrat from Maryland’s 3rd District who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, according to Elfreth’s office. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and Reps. Steny Hoyer, Andy Harris, Glenn Ivey, Kweisi Mfume, Johnny Olszewski, April McClain Delaney and Jamie Raskin also signed. Harris, a physician, is the only Republican in the state’s House delegation.
What the law does
The provision, which Elfreth wrote with Rep. Derek Schmidt (R-Kan.), directs the two departments to develop and carry out action plans at military and VA medical facilities to share resources, make more use of military hospitals that have excess capacity, improve veterans’ access to care and increase the volume of complex cases available for training medical professionals, according to the letter. It also calls for cross-credentialing doctors and other providers, speeding veterans’ access to military installations, linking information technology and medical-record systems, naming local coordinators and setting performance and patient-safety measures.
The lawmakers argued that Walter Reed, which they called “the Nation’s flagship joint military medical center,” is well suited to test that approach. They wrote that its location would let it serve a large population of veterans across Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District, and that it already works with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the University of Maryland Medical Center, the National Institutes of Health, the VA Maryland Health Care System, the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
“Together, its clinical capabilities, regional reach, and institutional partnerships make Walter Reed a strong location to demonstrate how coordination between the Departments can improve veterans’ access to care while strengthening military medical readiness, clinical expertise, and professional education,” they wrote.
The requests
The letter asks the Health Executive Committee to:
- Provide the criteria it is using to choose participating facilities and its expected implementation timeline;
- Jointly assess Walter Reed’s available capacity, clinical capabilities and suitability for an action plan under the provision;
- Involve Walter Reed’s leadership and the directors of relevant VA medical centers in a facility-level implementation plan; and
- Select Walter Reed as a demonstration site whose practices could inform future health care sharing agreements nationwide.
The lawmakers also wrote that veterans “must also retain the freedom to choose where they receive care, consistent with the protections established by Congress.”
Elfreth’s office said she learned about the opportunity to expand veterans’ access to care during a visit to Walter Reed, one stop on a statewide defense tour during her first year on the Armed Services Committee. The Health Executive Committee is expected to make a final decision in the coming months and report its site selections and implementation plan to Congress about a month later, according to her office.
Leave a Reply