The Rural Veterans Health Access Program (RVHAP) is one of HRSA’s www.hrsa.gov five telehealth grant programs to provide funding to provide mental health services and other injuries associated with veterans. RVHAP focuses on methods that use regional approaches, networks, health IT, telehealth, telemedicine to deliver services in rural areas.
The Maine Rural Veterans Health Access Program (MeRVHAP) focuses exclusively on creating interoperable health IT connections between the VA and Non-VA community providers. Maine’s Rural Health Research Center www.ruralhealthresearch.org has released a Working Paper titled “Health Information Exchange: A Strategy for Improving Access for Rural Veterans in the Maine Flex Rural Veterans Health Access Program”.
Out of the 41,648 veterans seen in 2014 by the Maine VA Healthcare System, 78 percent were from rural or highly rural areas. Many of the state’s veterans use both VA and non-VA providers including Community Access Hospitals and rural hospitals.
The VA Maine Healthcare System www.maine.va.gov represents a network of care providers, including the Togus VA Medical Center, eleven outpatient clinics that play a central role in the design and implementation of the MeRVHAP project.
Maine wants to use the statewide HIE to improve care coordination for veterans receiving dual care, provide coordinated and collaborative support to VA providers for implementing an HIE connection with HealthInfoNet, and make personal HIE records available to veterans needing information from their medical records.
In the second phase, authorized community providers will be allowed bi-directional access to VA patient information through the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record Health program (VLER) www.va.gov/vler. In the final phase, the project will enable veterans to share their health information in the form of a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) with community providers.
Additionally, plans are to connect all VA clinics in the state and the Togus VA Medical Center to the HIE, provide systems to enable veterans using the emergency room to provide this information to the VA and non-VA care managers.
Also, the goal is to coordinate HIE activity with behavioral health and primary care integration with patient-centered home initiatives and build a personal health record model to be used by veterans that is based on national standards.
Go to https://muskie.usm.maine.edu for more information on the Working Paper.