Dive Brief:
- A new VA overhaul bill pushing through substantial new health IT initiatives is under consideration on Capitol Hill, as former Procter & Gamble CEO Robert McDonald was confirmed as new Veterans Affairs secretary.
- The $17 billion overhaul bill authorizes VA to speed up the deployment of mobile clinics and the use of telemedicine, helping veterans avoid traveling long distances and cutting wait times to access medical care.
- The legislation would also require the VA to refurbish its scheduling software system.
Dive Insight:
If the VA proceeds with its telemedicine program, it could become one of the most prominent telemedicine providers in the U.S. health system, offering tele-surgery, tele-rehabilitation, tele-mental health and tele-cardiology as starters in its comprehensive program. This would put it far ahead of most commercial providers of healthcare services, very few of which have gone aggressively into telemedical services.
That being said, if the VA can barely schedule patients for its on-site clinic in a reasonable manner, and is riddled with employees who were willing to falsify documents to suggest that veterans were being seen when they weren't, McDonald has much bigger problems to cope with than instituting farseeing services like telemedicine. To say he has his hands full as an understatement. Seeing the VA make progress in any area of healthcare delivery is good; the question is simply where to begin in dealing with the massive problems the agency faces.
Want to read more? You may enjoy this story on the challenges that new VA secretary Robert McDonald faces.