A group of healthcare providers and administrators from the British National Health Service (NHS) www.nhs.uk recently visited the Veterans Administration’s (VA) Midwest Health Care Network (VISN 23) www.visn23.va.gov. The visit was part of an exchange program between the NHS and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
VISN 23 serves more than 440,000 enrolled veterans residing in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and portions of Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
VISN 23 is integrated system of nine hospitals, 66 community-based outpatient or outreach clinics, eight community living centers and four domiciliary residential rehabilitation treatment programs.
Mary Walker, Network Telehealth Program Manager at the VHA, reports, “The U.K has implemented a program of text messages supporting patients who have chronic illnesses. The VHA has been able to learn from their experience and is now in the process of deploying a similar program based upon the unique needs of veterans.”
The VA program has identified five main learning points:
- Transformation and the digital health journey must focus on strategies where technology can be used to improve patient care and service effectiveness
- Home telehealth needs to look at how patients in remote locations can use technology for both health monitoring in long-term care management
- Telemedicine must focus on the use of real-time video conferencing between patients and their providers to replicate traditional face-to-face consultations
- Mobile devices are needed to empower users with the information they need to improve healthcare delivery
- Secure patient-provider messaging and EHRs must be accessible for review
The visitors from the NHS visited the VA’s Minneapolis Health Care System’s www.minneapolis.va.gov main medical center location where they saw a demonstration of the e-Intensive Care Unit (eICU). They also toured the VA’s Northwest Metro Outpatient Clinic www.minneapolis.va.gov/locations/NorthwestMetro.asp in Ramsey Minnesota to see further application of telehealth in use.
After touring the VA centers, Joanne Harding, Program Director for the NHS Partnership Exchange Program said, “We are really looking to see how the VA has implemented the use of video consultations, uses EHRs, and how coordination of care is achieved between different teams of providers.
She added, “We are really looking to see how these strategies are implemented, the lessons learned, and how we can replicate some of these strategies back in England, Scotland, and Wales.”