Gina Capra, Director of the Veterans Administration’s Office of Rural Health (ORH) www.ruralhealth.va.gov appeared before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs http://veterans.house.gov, Subcommittee on Health on September 1, 2015 to discuss how the Veterans Integrated Services Networks (VISN 11 and 12) in Michigan are effectively serving veterans.
There are about 660,800 veterans in Michigan with an estimated 230,000 enrolled in the VA healthcare system. Also, 207,000 of all Michigan veterans and approximately forty one percent of enrolled veterans live in rural areas.
Capra described how VISN 11 provides patient-centered care to about 399,825 veterans living in portions of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The VISN has 32 Community-Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOC) and seven healthcare systems with main campuses located in Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit, and Saginaw Michigan, Indianapolis and Ft. Wayne Indiana, and Danville, Illinois.
VISN 12 provides patient–centered care to about 15,000 of the 30,000 veterans living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. These services are provided primarily through the Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center (OGJVAMC) www.ironmountain.va.gov in Iron Mountain, Michigan.
OGJVAMC provides urgent care and acute inpatient care in a geographically rural area and collaborates with larger healthcare facilities in VISN 12, plus uses state-of-the-art telehealth technologies.
As of August 2015, about 2,560 veterans in Michigan enrolled in home telehealth services to manage diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and congestive heart failure. The VA continues to seek opportunities to expand care via telehealth technology. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is in the early stages of developing a collaborative effort with community providers to exchange health information with OGJVAMC as one of 14 pilot sites.
The general picture for the VA telehealth approach shows that in FY 2014, more than 717,000 veterans accessed VA care through telehealth during more than 2.1 million encounters. So far in FY 2015, more than 25,700 veterans accessed VA care through telehealth during more than 60,600 episodes in VISN 11. During this same period in VISN 12, about 23,000 veterans accessed VA care through telehealth during more than 109,900 encounters.