20. Department of Veterans Affairs · Minor
Assess facilities with below-average Community Care referral rates
Printed page 648 20. Department of Veterans Affairs
“Assess the medical facilities where Community Care is readily available but referrals for Community Care are below the averages in other similar markets, referrals expiring are above the average, and/or canceled appointments are above the average. Identify reasons and factors and consider possible ways to improve timeliness and responsiveness for veterans.”
What has happened
- Not started
No published assessment of facilities whose Community Care referral rates, referral expiries or cancellation rates sit outside their market peers. VA’s community-care reporting in the window is national and celebratory — record referrals, $36 billion of community care spending in FY2025, faster scheduling — with no facility-level comparison of referral performance and no announced review of the outliers.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Negative search, 2026-09-01: covered by the p. 646–648 cluster negative search in ch-20.md.
Item-specific checks: news.va.gov press-release search community care (25 releases since
2025-01-20, read by title) — the closest are
https://news.va.gov/press-room/va-community-care-contributed-more-than-36b-to-local-economies-in-fy-2025/
(2026-06-25) and the External Provider Scheduling release of 2026-03-09, neither of which reports
facility-level referral performance. Federal Register API,
conditions[agencies][]=veterans-affairs-department from 2025-01-20, all types, read by title —
nothing.
- Action
- other
- Object
- Community Care referral performance at VA medical facilities
- ID
- 1779