VA Ramps Up IT Efforts to Improve Digital Services for Veterans
Introduction
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is facing a rising demand for its services. The VA is responsible for providing healthcare and benefits to millions of veterans, and the number of veterans seeking care is expected to continue to grow in the coming years. To meet this demand, the VA is investing in its IT infrastructure and hiring more staff to support its digital services.
VA’s IT Modernization Efforts
The VA is currently in the midst of a major IT modernization effort. The goal of this effort is to improve the quality and efficiency of the VA’s digital services. The VA is investing in new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, to improve the accuracy and speed of its services. The VA is also working to make its digital services more user-friendly and accessible.
VA’s Hiring Push
In addition to investing in new technologies, the VA is also hiring more staff to support its digital services. The VA is particularly interested in hiring AI experts. AI can be used to improve the accuracy and speed of the VA’s services, and it can also be used to develop new and innovative services.
The PACT Act
The PACT Act, which was signed into law in 2022, has significantly expanded the VA’s eligibility for healthcare and benefits. The PACT Act covers veterans who were exposed to toxic substances during their military service. The VA is expecting a significant increase in the number of veterans seeking care as a result of the PACT Act.
VA’s Digital Services
The VA offers a wide range of digital services to veterans. These services include:
- Online appointment scheduling
- Online health care records
- Online benefits applications
- Online claims tracking
- Online messaging with VA doctors
The VA is also working to make its digital services more mobile-friendly. The VA’s mobile app has been downloaded more than 2 million times, and it is used by more than 900,000 veterans each month.
Challenges Facing the VA
The VA faces a number of challenges in its efforts to improve its digital services. These challenges include:
- A large and complex IT infrastructure
- A shortage of qualified IT staff
- A lack of funding
The VA is working to address these challenges. The VA is investing in new technologies and hiring more staff. The VA is also working with Congress to secure additional funding.
Conclusion
The VA is making significant progress in its efforts to improve its digital services. The VA is investing in new technologies, hiring more staff, and working to make its services more user-friendly and accessible. The VA is also working to address the challenges it faces. The VA is confident that it can meet the growing demand for its services.
Full Article
The Department of Veterans Affairs is delivering healthcare and benefits to a record number of veterans. Now it’s calling on its IT shop to make it easier for those veterans to seek VA services online.
VA’s Office of Information and Technology (VA OIT) is planning to update the digital services many veterans rely on to receive VA healthcare and benefits.
It’s also looking to staff up to support the VA’s largest workforce at the Veterans Health Administration and Veterans Benefits Administration, as well as the veterans they serve.
Kurt DelBene, the assistant secretary for information and technology, and VA’s chief information officer, said VA OIT is making a “modest request” to hire more employees, with a focus on staffing up with artificial intelligence experts.
“As the footprint of VHA and VBA expands because of the PACT Act, we have a proportional increase that we need to add, in terms of our footprint geographically, to all the different facilities we have, to actually support them with end-user support,” DelBene told reporters in a briefing Thursday.
“Especially with the PACT Act, adding new people who can get healthcare and benefits from us, it really puts that higher premium around being able to do things like automation,” he added.
The PACT Act, which expands VA healthcare and benefits eligibility for veterans exposed to toxic substances during their military service, also gives the VA new pay incentives to recruit and retain employees with in-demand skills.
VA OIT tapped into one of those new pay incentives, a Special Salary Rate for IT and cyber employees, last summer. The SSR gave about 7,000 VA OIT employees a 17% average pay raise.
VA OIT made about 1,000 new hires last year. While the VA is looking to hire more AI experts, DelBene said the department is using the IT and cyber workforce it already has to accelerate its use of AI tools.
“Our folks are probably more of a jack-of-all-trades. If you go to another location, it may be, ‘Hey, I focus just on end-user support, or I focus just on servers and networking. We ask people to do everything. That makes it a fun job, but it also means there’s a little bit of a higher expectation for those folks,” DelBene said.
Congress passed a continuing resolution on Thursday to avoid a government shutdown and keep current federal spending levels in place through March.
But DelBene urged lawmakers to pass a comprehensive spending deal for the rest of fiscal 2024 — one that gives the VA the funding it needs to make more AI hires.
“We want to staff up in the AI space, in particular, and that becomes challenging under a CR. Obviously. the applied-for budget in 2024 is larger than our existing budget, and that’s what’s necessary to add more headcount,” DelBene said.
Among its AI use cases, the VA is running a tech sprint looking at how these tools could pull insights from paper health records coming from outside the VA medical system.
“There’s a ton of activity that has been focused on research and pilots, and many of those are probably on the cusp of being things that we might be able to deploy more broadly in the coming couple of years,” VA Chief Technology Officer Charles Worthington said. “So we’re trying to set up the scaffolding to support that right now.”
The VA, during a PACT Act special enrollment period last year, saw 40,000 veterans sign up VA healthcare for the first time. Worthington said that’s the biggest single month on record for new healthcare sign-ups on VA.gov.
To expedite the healthcare enrollment for veterans, Worthington said VA OIT is looking at ways to avoid asking the same repetitive questions during the sign-up process.
“When we know who the person is applying for healthcare, we’re able to cut down the length of time that form takes, by avoiding asking questions that we might already know the answer to,” Worthington said. “Or in the case of a veteran that already has a disability rating, we know that they’re eligible for certain types of healthcare without asking a bunch of other questions.”
DelBene added: “A veteran ought to go to one place, for instance, to say they got married, or their beneficiaries change. Some of these scenarios we do in a unified way, some we don’t yet. And so, I think we’ve got a few years’ worth of work there to get that really seamless for veterans.”
Worthington said VA OIT is also focused on a “refresh” of the department’s healthcare tools. That includes an update to features on VA’s My HealtheVet portal.
“Those are going to be still accessible, but are going to be upgraded and integrated with the rest of the VA.gov platform in a way that will make them more powerful and easier to use,” Worthington said.
Worthington said the refresh means that, in addition to core healthcare functions like messaging VA doctors, veterans can complete related tasks like ordering hearing-aid batteries or requesting travel reimbursement.
“The VA has a lot of unique things that we offer our patients, beyond just the core patient portal experiences. And so, in the coming year, we’re going to be basically delivering a lot of those My HealtheVet experiences within the VA.gov platform in a way that’s going to better integrate those experiences across business lines,” Worthington said.
The VA is also taking steps to meet veterans where they are, and delivering services through more convenient platforms.
“We want the digital channel to be the fastest, most reliable and easiest way for benefits to get the things they need from the VA, so that basically any veteran that wants to use a digital experience to access VA care or benefits should be able to — and that has a ton of benefits,” Worthington said.
Worthington said that most months, the VA is getting more online traffic from smartphones than computers.
“That’s a sign that people are really relying on their phones as a way to access VA information,” he said.
VA’s health and benefits mobile app has more than 2 million downloads, and more than 900,000 veterans are using the app at least once a month.
Among its features, the app allows veterans to message their doctor, check on the status of a healthcare appointment and check the status of a benefits claim.
Worthington said VA OIT this year is looking to add new features to the mobile app. Those include access to more medical records, such as lab results, and making it easier for veterans to check into medical appointments using their smartphones.
“On the day of an appointment, at the medical center, they’ll be able to indicate to the staff that, ‘Hey, I’m here and check in right from the app,’” Worthington said.
VA also recently made it possible for veteran to download their decision letters for disability claims from their computers and mobile devices.
DelBene said VA OIT is also bringing together disparate systems for an “integrated call center experience” at VHA.
“When the automated call pops, you know who that person is, or what we know about them, and you can immediately get them to the care that they need,” DelBene said.
VA also expects to resume the launch of its Oracle-Cerner Electronic Health Record this summer.