Program Success Stories
Mobile Tablets Support Emergency TeleStroke Care
VA Connected Care is providing mobile tablets to VA care teams to support VA’s National TeleStroke Program (NTSP) and to help ensure the quickest possible care is available for Veteran patients. As is the case with non-VA hospitals throughout the nation, some VA medical centers lack the expertise or staffing to provide 24/7/365 acute stroke consultation. NTSP was designed to assist sites in overcoming these challenges by using mobile and telehealth technologies to bring acute stroke expertise to the bedside anywhere in the country.
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VA-Issued Mobile Devices Enable Care for Veterans at Non-VA Hospitals in the Orlando Area
The Orlando VA Medical Center partners with local non-VA community and university hospitals to provide inpatient care for Veterans. The chief benefit of this model is that it provides care closer to rural Veterans, while keeping the coordination of care under VA physicians and case managers. One of the keys to the success of this pilot is ensuring VA care teams at non-VA hospitals have access to VA information, including patient history, records and more. Fortunately, the entire 10-person Community Inpatient Care Team participating in the initiative has VA-issued mobile devices as part of the VA Mobile Health Provider Program.
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Mobile Devices Provide Immediate Answers
VA care team members are frequently required to make complex, rapid, and potentially life-saving decisions under dynamic and fluid work conditions, which means access to critical health-related information is vital. Colette Chevaillier, an Occupational Health RN at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System (HCS), says there is never a “typical” workday. Throughout the week, her responsibilities take her to multiple Palo Alto HCS outreach clinics in California. Some of the clinics are hours away from her main office, which is why she is thrilled to have been issued a tablet as part of the Mobile Health Provider Program.
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VA Outreach Teams Equipped with Mobile Technology Bring Care to Veterans in Need
Veterans most in need of medical care may be homeless, homebound and unaware of their benefits. They may also be without the means or ability to travel to a distant VA facility. At the VA Palo Alto Health Care System (HCS), the Veteran Outreach team travels around nine vast counties of Northern California and brings care directly to Veterans. The teams are equipped with Microsoft Windows Lenovo mobile devices (tablets), which enable access to critical information whether they are at a homeless clinic, in a medical outreach van, at a patient’s home or even to areas affected by recent forest fires.
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Mobile devices reduce waste, increase productivity
VA health care team members at the Miami VA Healthcare System are finding ways to comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act by using VA-issued mobile devices (tablets) to cut printing costs, save time and increase their productivity for a number for tasks that were previously paper-based.
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Mobile Devices Enhance Patient Care Delivery
Imagine your office is in one building and you work with patients or colleagues in three different buildings, and several times a day you find yourself looking for a computer workstation to access information. Consider how much time you could save by having instant access to the same information, right at your fingertips!
This is just one of many cases at the VA Boston Healthcare System which illustrate why 91% of VA care team members who received a VA-issued mobile device (tablet) as part of the Mobile Health Provider Program reported that they like that VA is providing new and innovative tools. Read more!
VA Mobile Health Provider Program
Jeanne Chartier has served as a nurse practitioner treating Veterans and patients at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in Bronx, New York for more than two decades. Chartier regularly uses her tablet as a valuable tool to help her tackle the variety of tasks she performs every day. Whether it is running a Cancer Survivorship Clinic, managing cases or serving on the hospital's Tumor Board, Chartier uses the mobile device to instantly access necessary information.
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Mobile Devices Take on Environment of Care Rounds
Mobile devices are changing the way the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System (VA TVHS) ensures that the environment is a safe and clean place for Veterans and VA staff members. Until recently, environment of care (EOC) rounds involved reviewing long, detailed paper checklists that monitor everything from the proper storage of medical supplies, to the cleanliness of the water cooler tray, to ensuring stairways lights are working and sufficiently bright.
“The mobile devices save staff at least a full hour of their daily work lives. They can upload surveys quickly, download them quickly, and the inspections are finished,” said Jake Slivensky, who has been a Safety Manager at VA TVHS for the past 10 years. ” Read more!
Mobile Devices Improve Treatment Approach for Patients with Infectious Diseases
In the wake of the recent Ebola crisis, the Washington DC VAMC took action to reduce exposure risks for VA clinical staff and patients by considering how to improve their approach for treating patients suspected of having highly transmissible infectious diseases. “We needed to find a better way to minimize exposure for our health care team when treating patients with potential, highly communicable, infectious diseases,” explained Dr. Philip Seton, Chief of the Emergency Department at the Washington DC VAMC.
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Tomah VA uses mobile technology to enhance care
Although Dr. Niles had only been a part of the Mobile Health Provider Program for a few months, she quickly found real value in her mobile device. "I have found the iPad very useful," she said. "For example, if I'm bedside with a patient who is not stable and I don’t want to leave them, I can now use my iPad to place orders directly to the laboratory, radiology, or pharmacy." Previously, Dr. Niles had to leave the patient's bedside and walk to a computer work station to place these orders. Thanks to the mobile technology she can remain at the patient's bedside and send the order request directly to the appropriate department.
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Mobile Devices Bring Mobility to Patient Care
On April 15-16, 2015 more than 200 mobile devices were distributed to medical center staff at the Northport VA Medical Center to enhance the way providers deliver health care to veterans.
“I can use the [tablet] as a tool to do therapeutic activities with Veterans,” said Patrick Campbell, assistant chief of recreation therapy service. “There’s an app I can use to play memory games with veterans who have cognitive deficiencies" Read more!
Mobile Health Champion Dr. Shaman Singh
“I use my iPad to support my work about 95% of the day,” said Dr. Singh. For Dr. Singh, the real value of his mobile device is that he is no longer tethered to a desktop to pull up instant information for his patients. “I can put the iPad in front of the patient and let them see their information for themselves. They can pinch and view an image, and get a better understanding of what their numbers mean graphically. They can see if the results are too low or too high and relate them to interventions made over the past week or month.”
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New iPads Will Help Patient Care
VA Pittsburgh is riding the wave of the future, issuing iPads to care-givers to streamline and improve access to patient information. Dr. Charles W. Atwood, a pulmonary physician, who serves as chairman of the clinical informatics committee and project leader for the iPad initiative, is excited about the possibilities. "These iPads will allow our clinicians to access patient records remotely and securely through wireless connections," said Atwood. "This is a big leap in mobility from using laptops. The iPads come with programs that allow clinicians to set their calendars on the go and access their mail and messages at the hospital, home or en route."
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Mobile Device is “Worth a Thousand Words”
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. For Dr. Leslee Davis, who recently received a VA-issued mobile device, that old adage certainly stands true. As both a primary care physician and as the Women’s Clinic Medial Director at the Orlando VA Medical Center (VAMC), the integration of a mobile device into her everyday clinical practice has allowed her to enhance patient education at the point of care. “I recently used the iPad with a patient who thought she had a certain dermatological condition. I brought up the dermatology app, showed her some pictures, and thanks to the clear visual, she quickly realized that she was going to be okay. This is a great tool,” said Dr. Davis.
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When Seconds Count
While driving home from work one evening, Dr. Frank Liu, chief of the Nuclear Medicine Services at the Washington DC VA Medical Center, received a call to read an emergency scan of an Intensive Care patient. Dr. Liu immediately pulled to the side of the road to use is new VA-issued mobile device to access the patient’s scans. He determined that the patient had multiple life-threatening blood clots in his lungs and was able to inform the MICU staff for immediate treatment. Thanks to the availability of his mobile device, the right technology was available when it was needed most.
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