“The outbreak of COVID-19 in the U.S. placed exceptional demands on the Department of Veterans Affairs, requiring multiple areas of emergency readjustment to ensure continued functionality of essential services.”
“The VA stands as both America’s largest civilian agency and its most extensive integrated health care network, with the Veterans Health Administration providing care for approximately 9 million veterans annually. This alone presented a dual challenge for the VA: how to provide emergency services for patients with potentially life-threatening COVID-19 symptoms while sustaining other forms of physical and mental health care.”
“Despite the abrupt stressors of the pandemic, the VA went into 2020 having already invested considerable development in telehealth as a central component of the agency’s broader IT modernization program.”
“The VA’s launch of the ATLAS program in late 2019 represented a forward step in the agency’s efforts to provide care to veterans in more remote areas, or who might otherwise have challenges reaching in-person care centers. With a survey finding that roughly one-third of the veterans served by the agency live in rural areas, VA leadership made it an essential priority to provide the means to deliver a baseline of care.”
“Much of this has included providing both the infrastructure and internet access for veterans who might lack those same capacities in the home, as well as distributing medical devices to provide essential biometric…” Read the full article here.
Source: Telehealth’s Boom in 2020 and Beyond at Veterans Affairs – By Adam Patterson, December 21, 2020. GovernmentCIO.
