The VA’s Office of Connected Care https://connectedcare.va.gov provided funding to Dr. Leah Haverhals, Dr. Cari Levy, and several other researchers to assess changes in the delivery and utilization of telehealth due to the pandemic.
Researchers are studying how to provide telehealth to State Veterans Nursing Homes (SVH) https://va.gov/geriatrics/pages/state_veterans during the pandemic, especially as overall VA telehealth care has increased dramatically during these times.
The researchers saw a need to further help veterans by developing the telehealth program called VetConnect https://enableAmerica.org/VetConnect. This program provides telehealth care to nursing home veterans in geriatrics, palliative care, psychology, and psychiatry among other specialties.
Dr. Haverhals and Dr. Levy also evaluated the expansion of VA telehealth to SVHs in FY 2018 and 2019 across the VA system. Expanding SVHs is particularly important as the pandemic limits in-person medical visits especially since a number of SVHs are in rural areas.
The goal is to ensure that positive changes and lessons learned in the delivery of telehealth services during the pandemic can be used to inform future utilization, adoption, and sustainability is possible while ensuring high quality of care.