The Veterans Administration is making good use of Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT) in new ways at VA’s Butler Healthcare System located in Pennsylvania. Several new programs are in effect. They include working with the Louis A. Johnson Medical Center in Clarksburg West Virginia to assist veterans with limb amputations with concerns related to fitting and other issues, assisting veterans receiving blood thinning products at the Mercer and Laurence Community-based outpatient clinics, and diagnosing treatments needed for speech language cognitive programs.
The Minnesota VA received over $200,000 in grants to improve emergency healthcare services for women and to offer more telehealth services. Several examples of specialized services include telepharmacy using video conferencing to provide pharmacotherapy, and support for the Maternity Care Coordination Telehealth pilot project located in Greater Los Angeles.
The VA Boston Healthcare System (VA-BHS) actively involved in telehealth is now adding more clinical options for patients to use. Right now VA-BHS offers telehealth to deliver services in radiology, mental health, spinal cord injury, nutrition, vascular surgery, allergy issues, orthopedic surgery, amputation care, dermatology and retinal imaging. In addition, many of the outpatient clinics are establishing a CVT based relationship to deliver and coordinate other clinical specialties to include home-based primary care and teleaudiology.
Since many veterans live in rural areas, the Veterans Rural Health Resource Center-Eastern Region is collaborating with the Lake City VAMC Spinal Cord Injury and Disorders Clinic to provide veterans with ALS a new care coordination program that involves telerehabilitation and telemedicine to help veterans in Northern Florida and in the Georgia Veterans Health System.