Notice ID: 36C10B23Q0229
Description
In March 2022, the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) organized a multi-disciplinary action team of national and field representatives to produce an implementation plan that will drive VA toward one strategic vision of the scheduling process. Integrated Veteran Care identified scheduling as a strategic goal, then identified multiple Information Technology (IT) programs which resulted in the stand-up of the multi-disciplinary action team. Separately, in determining VA priorities for VA IT funding, VA identified multiple program offices sponsoring parallel and overlapping IT requests, driving the need for better synergy among technical requirements and business needs for scheduling at all levels of VA. This resulted in an integrated scheduling effort where VA is seeking to foster an environment of seamless visibility of its internal Electronic Health Records’ provider grid availability as well as community grid provider access for in-person care, telehealth, video care and other non-in-person modalities.
DESIRED END STATE
- Resource based Software as a Service (SaaS) Scheduling capability across all modalities (in-person, telehealth, virtual, video, telephone) into one scheduling view. This would consist of multi-site External providers with a transparent view of all availability of providers scheduling grids and capabilities.
- Ability to change from one modality (e.g., in-person appointment) to another (e.g., video telehealth)
- Baseline information on the providers (baseline information in further discussion)
- Ability to interface with existing VA systems including VistA/CPRS, Oracle Cerner, GOV, along with others.
- Ability to interface with commercial Electronic Health Records or healthcare appointment scheduling systems.
- Provides real-time changes in appointments scheduled, availability changes are reflected in down-stream apps, and provides appointment completion notification to provider, or no-show notifications.
- Historical view of scheduling across all platforms.
- Self-scheduling interface for Veteran use for VA external providers.
- Provides notifications to patients of new availability of earlier appointments for those patients who need it and cancellations to preclude the Veterans potential lost travel time.
- Automatically include new providers in community.
- Notification of event-based triggers for scheduling (e.g., clinic closure due to weather event, changes in health policy such as lowered ages for screenings, etc.).
