The FY 17 budget for the Veterans Administration (VA) www.va.gov is requesting $182.3 billion. The request for the medical care budget is $68.6 billion to be provided to over 922,000 veterans. Some of the major spending categories are $12.2 billion for care in the community, $8.5 billion for long term care, $7.8 billion for mental health, and $1.6 billion for homeless veterans.
In 2015, with a total of $1.05 billion, VHA Telehealth Services www.telehealth.va.gov provided more than two million consultations to over 677,000 veterans. The FY 2017 budget requests $1.2 billion for telehealth which is an increase of 5.1 percent above the 2016 level and plans to deliver telehealth-based services to nearly 762,000 veterans. Examples of available telehealth services includes tele-intensive care, tele-audiology, tele-pathology, tele-radiology and tele-mental health.
Since a high number of veterans live in rural areas, the VA funds projects through the VHA Office of Rural Health (ORH) www.ruralhealth.va.gov to serve the needs of over three million enrolled veterans living in rural and highly rural areas. The FY 2017 budget requests $250 million for rural health projects.
These services include home-based primary care, training and education of medical residents in rural clinical settings, equipment for CBOCs, transportation for rural veterans, and home-based therapies.
The FY 2017 budget request has funding to continue the VA’s investment in IT to help manage the veterans’ health information systems and to process benefits claims. VistA www.ehealth.va.gov/vista.asp requests $259.9 million plus the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS) www.benefits.va.gov/benefits requests $143 million.
The budget request includes $180 million including $143 million for IT and $37 million in the VBMS to improve the electronic claims processing system, and $143 million for the Veterans Claims Intake program to continue converting paper records into electronic images and data in VBMS.