Under the president’s leadership, we have enacted major reform bills including Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, the Forever GI Bill and Appeals Modernization, among others.
"As a physician I tend to look at things in terms of the way I was trained – assess, diagnose, and then aggressively treat the patient,” VA Secretary Dr. David Shulkin said before outlining the current state of VA, clearly identifying risks the department faces in caring for Veterans.
The goal is to gain a better understanding of Veterans’ personal experiences using VA community care, both positive and negative, so we can turn that feedback into action.
VHA TRAIN is an intuitive and easy-to-access portal that is making Veteran-focused continuing medical information more available to the community providers.
Recently extended through June 30, 2019, the agreement will continue to improve the Veteran experience with community care by providing timely access to care closer to home and strengthening VA’s high-performing network within a culturally sensitive community.
Last fiscal year, VA provided mental health treatment to more than 1.6 million Veterans, resulting in over 21 million encounters. Of those, more than 133,000 Veterans received some of their mental health treatment through telehealth equaling more than 426,000 encounters.
In an effort to enhance partnerships between VA and our community providers, VA senior leaders recently traveled to Montana and Alaska VA Medical Centers to learn about how those two states are providing service to Veterans in the community.
VA welcomed leaders from the health care industry to a roundtable discussion on innovations and trends in community care coordination.