Health Care Professionals
VA’s virtual health technologies enable VA care teams to offer high-quality, continuous care options to Veterans. By embracing health technology such as My HealtheVet, VA apps, and VA telehealth, VA care teams expand Veterans’ access to care, improve their care experience, and empower them to take charge of their health and wellness.
To learn more about how VA care teams can use Connected Care technologies to improve Veteran care, explore the tabs above.
Want to share information about Connected Care technologies with the Veterans in your care? Visit the Connected Care Outreach Toolkit to find informational flyers, handouts, videos, and social media content.
Secure Messaging
Secure Messaging through My HealtheVet enables Veterans and VA care teams to send and receive messages in a secure online environment. Secure Messaging makes it easier to communicate in between appointments and ask non-urgent health questions.
Secure Messaging is available 24/7 through My HealtheVet. Veterans and their VA care teams can share files and images through Secure Messaging.
To use Secure Messaging, Veterans need a My HealtheVet Premium account. Learn more about getting a My HealtheVet account by contacting your facility’s My HealtheVet Coordinator, visiting the My HealtheVet website, or accessing My HealtheVet outreach materials.
How Secure Messaging Helps VA Care Teams and Veterans
Dr. David Douglas, chief health information officer from the Portland VA Medical Center in Oregon, played an instrumental role in developing Secure Messaging.
Iraq Veteran David Naszbaum, a patient of Dr. Douglas, said Secure Messaging helps him stay in touch with his provider on an ongoing basis, helping them both make better use of time in face-to-face appointments.
To access My HealtheVet and Secure Messaging training resources and information, visit the My HealtheVet intranet site.
VA App Store
The VA App Store offers a number of mobile apps to help health care professionals access information quickly, communicate with patients more easily, and save time by managing information on-the-go. These apps extend care beyond the traditional office visit, empowering Veterans to be active participants in their own care. Learn more and download the apps by visiting the VA App Store.
Learn more about how VA mobile apps are helping health care professionals:
Providers On-the-Go
Learn more about how VA mobile apps are helping health care professionals. Providers use their devices in a variety of ways to improve health care delivery:
As apps are released, there will be more opportunities to use mobile technology to improve Veteran care. VA will be releasing a series of apps that will allow for mobile-optimized access to real-time Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture/Computerized Patient Record System (VistA/CPRS) information to inform clinical decisions. These apps will enable providers to write progress notes, enter a subset of orders and complete other clinical tasks, as well as support specific common workflows.
“If I’m bedside with a patient who is not stable and I don’t want to leave them, I can now use my device to place orders directly to the laboratory, radiology, or pharmacy,” said Dr. Sarah Niles at the Tomah VA Medical Center.
For Dr. Shaman Singh, the real value of his mobile device is that he has instant access his patients' information. "I use my iPad to support my work about 95% of the day,” said Dr. Singh, a hospitalist at the Washington DC VA Medical Center. “I use it to reference patients’ charts, place orders and pull up medical diagrams to provide patient education.”
“Mobile computing is the wave of the future – the ability to have patient information readily available wherever you are," said Dr. Atwood of Pittsburgh Healthcare System. “We believe this technology will bring us in closer cooperation with our patients.”
VA Telehealth Services
VA Telehealth Services provides clinical care to Veterans remotely.
VA telehealth technologies enhance Veterans’ access to care. For Veterans who live far from VA Medical Centers, have difficulty getting to the clinic for care, or need a specialty service not offered in their area, telehealth enables them to access the care they need.
Through innovative technologies, VA can provide many types of telehealth care. Some ways that VA care teams can use telehealth to enhance patient care include:
- Real-time, interactive video visits with Veterans and their family members or caregivers.
- In-home and mobile remote monitoring health technologies.
- Devices that gather and store health data remotely.