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Teleneurology in the US Veteran Health Administration

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Teleneurology in Practice

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Abstract

The US Veterans Health Administration has become the world leader in telehealth programs that use electronic information and telecommunication technologies to deliver distant clinical health care and patient and professional health-related education. The goal is to deliver health care to over 3.4 million enrolled eligible veterans who live in rural areas of the USA. The delivery of rural neurological care is particularly challenging as many veterans have chronic conditions making it difficult to drive long distances to reach major veterans administration (VA) medical centers. To minimize this difficulty, teleneurology now offers veterans a variety of telehealth services that include clinical video telehealth (enables a neurologist at a major VA medical center to directly talk and examine a veteran at their local VA community clinic using cutting edge video-teleconferencing systems), care coordination/home telehealth (CCHT) or home automated telemanagement (Internet-based platforms linking patients with chronic neurologic illnesses in their homes to care providers to improve patient education, self-management, and clinical outcomes), specialty care access network-extension for community healthcare outcomes [SCAN-ECHO] (delivery of integrated consultations from neurology specialists to providers in small medical centers with medically complex patients via videoconferencing), and store and forward technology (enables transmission of electroencephalograms, retinal images, and neuroimages from small VA medical centers to major medical centers for expert interpretation of the images).

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Abbreviations

CVT:

Clinical video telehealth

CCHT:

Care coordination/home telehealth

HAT:

Home automated telemanagement

SCAN-ECHO:

Specialty care access network-extension for community healthcare outcomes

CBOC:

Community-based outpatient clinic

VA:

Veterans administration

VHA:

Veterans Health Administration

ER:

Emergency room

ECoE:

Epilepsy Centers of Excellence

MSCoE:

Multiple Sclerosis Centers of Excellence

PADRECC:

Parkinson Disease, Research, Education, and Clinical Centers

PNES:

Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures

MS HAT:

Multiple sclerosis home automated telemanagement

CPRS:

Computerized patient record system

MRI:

Magnetic resonance imaging

CT:

Computed tomography

UPDRS:

Unified Parkinson’s disease rating scale

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neurology Service, New Mexico Veterans Affairs Health Care System, 1501 San Pedro Dr. SE, 87108, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Larry E. Davis MD & Molly K. King MD

  2. Department of Neurology, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, 1 University of New Mexico, 87131, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Larry E. Davis MD & Molly K. King MD

  3. Neurology Service, San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 4150 Clement Street Box 127E, 94121, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Nina I. Garga MD & Stephanie Chen MSN, MPH, FNP

  4. Department of Neurology, University of California San Francisco, 505 Parnassus Avenue, 94143, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Nina I. Garga MD & Karen L. Parko MD

Authors
  1. Larry E. Davis MD
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  2. Nina I. Garga MD
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  3. Molly K. King MD
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  4. Stephanie Chen MSN, MPH, FNP
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  5. Karen L. Parko MD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Larry E. Davis MD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Jack W. Tsao

  2. Neurology, Professor of Neurology, Mayo Clinic Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

    Bart M. Demaerschalk

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Davis, L., Garga, N., King, M., Chen, S., Parko, K. (2015). Teleneurology in the US Veteran Health Administration. In: Tsao, J., Demaerschalk, B. (eds) Teleneurology in Practice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2349-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2349-6_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-2348-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-2349-6

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