The new legislation would require the VA to ensure every mobile veterans’ center and every mobile medical center is capable of providing telemedicine services. The department would also be required to include analysis of the effectiveness of these telemedicine efforts in the department’s annual report.
Currently, the VA has 300 mobile veterans centers and 70 mobile medical units, which are capable of handling more complex cases than the mobile veterans centers, according to Politico. The use of telemedicine is already on the rise at the VA — last year, 11 percent of veterans received telemedicine services, up from about 9 percent in 2012, according to the report.
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