Here are five things to know about the VA’s health IT initiatives.
1. The VHA’s 2016 budget, which totals $56 billion, seeks increased funding for mental health, female veteran services and online access and telehealth technology. The proposed budget allocates approximately $1.2 billion to improving telehealth efforts to better serve veterans in remote areas with limited access to care. This is a $126 million increase from the 2015 budget.
2. Cleveland Clinic and the VA linked their medical records in the beginning of February for more than 1,800 patients who receive care from both the Cleveland Clinic and VA facilities.
3. The VA treated approximately 690,000 patients via telemedicine in fiscal year 2014, which is approximately one in eight veterans. More than 2 million telemedicine visits were conducted through the VA healthcare system, which offers care in 44 different medical specialties.
4. Give an Hour is a nonprofit group that provides troops and their families access to free telehealth mental health services. The organization was founded in 2005, and in the past 10 years it has grown and partnered with a number of technology businesses, data analytics firms and telehealth vendors.
5. Last year, the VA’s Connected Health program distributed more than 10,000 tablets to clinicians across the country and launched a mobile app store to offer veterans access to healthcare services, according to a Washington Post report. The VA is also developing an app called MyVAHealth, which will allow veterans to upload medical information directly to healthcare providers. A test version of the app is expected to be released sometime this year, the report says.
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