 Hi, I'm Peter Dickinson, Senior Executive Advisor for DAV. Today I want to talk to you about one of DAV's critical policy goals, building a better veterans health care system for the future. There are a few promises more sacred than caring for the men and women who have been injured or made ill during their service to our nation. Over the past decade, the VA health care system has undertaken some historic reforms that would improve veterans access to timely and high quality care. While progress has been made with over nine million enrolled veterans and in the midst of a pandemic and economic crisis, the challenges VA and veterans face has never been greater. In 2018, Congress passed the VA Mission Act to improve veterans access to care. The guiding principle of that law was that VA would remain the primary provider and coordinator of care for veterans. The Mission Act replaced the old veterans choice program with the new veteran care networks. However, the transition has been slow. Another key element of the law was that community providers would meet the same access and quality standards as VA. Unfortunately, that's not what VA did. So we are calling on VA to faithfully complete implementation of the Mission Act as Congress intended to fully engage with veterans and VSOs and to make veterans health care preferences the paramount consideration. DAB is also calling on VA and Congress to ensure that all community providers meet the same training and certification requirements as well as access and quality standards that VA providers must meet. Another key part of the Mission Act is the creation of the Asset and Infrastructure Review, AIR, or AIR, as it's known, to develop a long-term plan to modernize, realign, and rebuild VA's health care facilities. Making sure that the veterans' hospitals and clinics are properly funded and maintained is absolutely essential to maintaining a convenient access to care for all veterans. Unfortunately, as a result of delays implementing the Mission Act and a year-long disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic, VA is behind schedule completing their health care market assessments and VA has not adequately consulted during this process either with veterans or with VSOs. Therefore, DAV is calling on Congress to extend the AIR timeline by at least one year and to ensure that lessons we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic are fully incorporated into health facility planning. Another vital transformation taking place is VA's transition to a new electronic health record or EHR system for the future. This is absolutely critical to delivering modern medicine. A new HR system will allow the seamless transmission of medical records as veterans move from active-duty DOD service to VA and community care providers in the future. To accomplish this, VA began a 10-year $16 billion modernization in 2018, starting with two locations, one in the Pacific Northwest and the other in central Ohio. By the end of next year, 23 more sites of care should have the new CERNR EHR system operational. DAV is calling on Congress to aggressively oversee VA's transition to a new EHR system, one which must include a modern scheduling system and a user-friendly interface that allows veterans to self-schedule their own appointments. Finally, the past year emphasized the need for VA to provide uninterrupted care to veterans, whether during pandemics or other national emergencies. As you may know, in addition to providing health care to millions of veterans every year, VA has several other critical missions, including what's called their fourth mission, which is to back up the Department of Defense and the nation during wars or other national emergencies. For example, VA provided medical and mental health support in New York City after 9-11, VA provided health care services in Louisiana during and after Hurricane Katrina, and VA has provided important support to dozens of states during the past year as the COVID pandemic wreaked havoc across our nation. At the same time, as the pandemic took hold throughout this country, veterans, just like all Americans, had their health care interrupted and often delayed. That's why DAV is calling on Congress to ensure that VA's fourth mission responsibilities are appropriate to serve the nation during future emergencies, but maintaining that VA must always have the ability first and foremost to provide veterans with uninterrupted access to the care they need. To learn more about this critical policy goal and other DAV priorities and resources for the 117th Congress, go to DAV.org slash 2021 midwinter. Thank you.