“Dr. Neil Evans, VA’s newly appointed acting CIO and longstanding practicing physician at the Veterans Health Administration, discussed how many of these investments were intended in large part to uphold VA’s medical services during a time of unprecedented strain for American health care as a whole. VA has increasingly oriented its telehealth capacities toward providing support for in-person care as well, with the goal of supporting practitioners already contending with significant demands amidst the pandemic…”
“This has occurred alongside a substantial increase in VA’s in-home telehealth services, an expansion in remote care designed to provide patient support even in cases where local clinics are overwhelmed, or patients might want to avoid in-person care due to pandemic concerns. These have also included mental telehealth where veterans are provided mental health and counseling services remotely….”
Concurrent to this expansion in telehealth services has been a corresponding investment in remote work capacities that have allowed “VA’s employees to continue supporting the agency’s modernization efforts and delivery of services from their homes. This has been coupled with the allocation of tablets and other devices to veterans in rural areas who might have otherwise faced challenges reliably accessing VA services due to local technical limitations….
“This expansion in both health IT and remote work capacities has been met with ongoing cybersecurity efforts to ensure critical systems remain protected during these transformations. This has included a particular focus on multi-factor authentication and attention to zero trust security principles….”
“VA’s ongoing cloud transformation has also been leveraged toward protecting the agency’s IT systems during these large-scale transitions, both expediting the process while providing a higher level of security…” Read the full article here.
Source: Telehealth, Cloud Shine in VA Mid-Year Tech Report – October 1, 2021. GovernmentCIO.
