Improving Veterans Healthcare Research

The Department of Veteran Affairs is in charge of ensuring that veterans get their right to healthcare services once they are registered. Veteran affairs generally provide health care services to about 9 million veterans yearly. Quality healthcare access to Veterans is the very vital role that the nation should be committed, but there are some glitches in the provision of quality healthcare access to veterans. Improving Veterans Healthcare According to several studies, veterans are nowadays expected to wait for long periods of time to access healthcare or see a medical practitioner; access to health facilities is at times difficult, and these are some of the few reasons the Veterans choice Act was formulated in 2014 (CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare, 2015). Despite the attempts to make veterans have quality and easy access to healthcare, the policies are not being followed as expected thus veterans still suffer the plight of lack of access to good quality healthcare.

They are unable to transport themselves to a nearby facility despite there being a medical emergency that needs to be attended to. Access to outpatient appointments for veterans is still a problem that has been dragging along for a while; veterans have long wait times when receiving outpatient services, especially if they have a booked appointment. This was caused by inconsistent record keeping and time tracking within the health facilities (Chokshi, 2014). Some medical staff went as far as entering the wrong appointment date without the patient's consent, and patients could not see the medical practitioners on their desired date. Veterans live in different geographic Ares within the United States thus making it hard for all of them to be close to a health facility (CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare, 2015).

Having an eHealth system that keeps track of the appointments and those involved in the process will create accountability of the whole process. If a veteran cannot access a facility, there should be the place to enable them to get a home visit from a practitioner to check on their progress (VHA, 2016). Once an appointment is scheduled the veteran should be informed to allow them to state their availability in the set date and a reminder sent to a healthcare provider to ensure they meet the appointment and do not keep the veteran more than 30 days. An e-health system will also make it easy to keep records of the treatment of veterans and the number of times they visit a health facility.

What it will make it easy for organizations to research the implementation of set policies as data will be readily available. In developing the model, one should follow a few steps to achieve a positive difference. There should be the identification of the goals that should be met with the new change, identification of the outcome of the goals, identification of activities to be undertaken to bring about change, identification of common links and examination of any assumptions made about the change (TSIP, 2018). In the identification of goals; the difference being made in the veterans’ health care provision is aimed at ensuring access to quality and timely health services to all veterans regardless of their location. There are outcomes of the goals which will include proper record keeping of patient’s information, proper scheduling of veteran medical appointments, documentation of veteran homecare visits, adequate registration of veterans with the VA and adequate facilities to receive medical treatment from.

While identifying any common links to the change; the program to bring about change should have the use of Technology to help in record keeping and management for easy medical access and partnership to offer health services to veterans. The questions should be administered to both the veterans and the health care providers so as to get their feedback on the current state of the healthcare system. This will ensure that if there is any technical glitch, poor quaity of sevice or improper sheduling of patients appointments, it is resolved in time. Once evaluation is done a proper report should be created with recommended changes for service improvement (Monitoring and evaluation framework, 2012). When there is partnership involved and the use of technology, there can be technical clashes in information integration and sharing due to the use of different structure to input data into a system; evaluation of the systems used will ensure such issues are dealt with appropriately and promptly that does not inhibit healthcare provision to the veterans.