Dive Brief:
- Freshly-minted Veterans Administration (VA) Secretary Robert McDonald, armed with impressive statistics, a generous appropriation from Congress and a record number of satisfied patients, told veterans that he aims to expand the VA's already successful telehealth program in 2015.
- McDonald showed a small group of representatives from a number of veteran's services organizations what’s coming next with the program in a special meeting last October. He told them the VA's telehealth programs remain among the largest and most comprehensive in the nation, with more than 690,000 veterans taking part in more than 2 million virtual appointments during fiscal year 2014.
- "Today's demonstration is an important part of our ongoing conversation with our [veterans service organization] partners in developing the tools that ensure veterans have access to the quality care and services they have earned," McDonald said at the meeting, according to FedScoop. "Telehealth is rapidly becoming an attractive option, especially for veterans who do not have a VA health care facility close to home."
Dive Insight:
To truly understand the extent of the VA's telemedicine efforts, you have to look at the numbers.
In FY 2014, the VA reported that:
- 379,000 veterans participated in store-and-forward telehealth;
- 248,000 veterans received some sort of clinical video care;
- 156,000 veterans received in-home telehealth services;
- 108,000 veterans received mental health care via telehealth, with 336,000 total visits;
- 4,000 veterans have clinical video technology installed in their homes; and
- 44% of veterans living in rural areas have received some form of telehealth services.
Results of telehealth programs include a 34% reduction in readmissions for home telehealth participants and a 42% reduction in bed days for telehealth participants in FY 2014, according to an iHealth.org report. That report further stated that the VA's clinical video telehealth program received a 94% satisfaction rating in a FY 2014 survey of roughly 10,000 veterans, and store-and-forward tele-dermatology received a 92% patient satisfaction rating. Meanwhile, tele-retinology racked up a 94% patient satisfaction rating, with an additional survey of 200,000 home telehealth participants boasting an 85% patient satisfaction rate.
While the VA has done a great job extending telemedicine to veterans, the program has faced security challenges of late. The Federal Times reported just before Christmas that a security flaw in the telehealth network may have exposed sensitive information on more than 7,000 veterans. The VA was alerted Nov. 4, 2014, of a vulnerability in one of its vendor's systems and a scan by VA staff confirmed the security flaw. The VA reported that the flaw had been corrected, but as with any other health IT effort, security breaches will continue to be an issue. Still, on the whole things seem to be working well for the VA's telehealth effort, which is probably the largest such program in the US to date.