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    Department of Veterans Affairs

Service provider

Veterans Health Administration

Description

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated health care system in the United States, providing care at 1,293 health care facilities, including 171 VA Medical Centers and 1,112 outpatient sites of care of varying complexity to over 9 million Veterans enrolled in the VA health care program.


Designated Services

Previously-reported Services


Service

Utilizing in-person primary care

Description

Primary Care gives eligible Veterans easy access to health care professionals familiar with their needs. Primary Care provides long-term, patient-provider relationships, coordinates care across a spectrum of health services, educates, and offers disease prevention programs. Primary Care now serves as the foundation of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) health care and became the first point of contact with the health care system for Veterans enrolled in VHA.

Primary care is the provision of integrated, accessible health care services by physicians and their health care teams who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal health care needs, developing a sustained partnership with patients, and practicing in the context of family and community. Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) is a customized patient-centered medical home model of care adopted and branded by VHA. Most of our Veteran patients utilize VHA’s primary care service and have their own PACT.

Why this service was designated

Primary Care is the largest health care service in Veterans Health Administration (VHA). There are over 80,000 VHA employees that directly or indirectly provide primary care services. Further, the budget for primary care (and other related ancillary services that constitute ambulatory care in VHA) was over 27 billion dollars in 2020. There were over 11 million primary care appointments in the VA during FY21.

Service

Utilizing inpatient medical/acute care

Description

An enrolled Veteran patient may require inpatient care due to a variety of factors concerning their current health care. VA inpatient care includes a full spectrum of treatment including medical, surgical, mental health, dialysis, and acute care. VA inpatient care provides access to intensive care units (medical, surgical, mental health, cardiac), transplant care, spinal cord injury centers, traumatic brain injury units, and polytrauma centers. Depending on the care the enrolled Veteran requires, the Veteran may be admitted at a local VA medical facility; a further from home VA medical facility; or a local medical facility that partners with VHA.

Why this service was designated

VHA has a large number of inpatients every day on average, and it is one of the core health care service offerings. In 2020, VA spent over ten billion dollars to directly support inpatient medical care within the VA (medical services and medical facilities) and another six billion dollars for inpatient medical care in the community (outside of VA).


Previously-reported Services

Prior to the first service designation exercise in 2022, HISPs were collecting data using methods unique to each agency, resulting in data that was not standardized. This previously-reported data was collected to increase visibility and awareness regarding customer experience through feedback data. Per A-11 guidance, service providers will collect feedback in a more standardized way.


Service   Previously-reported

Receiving outpatient services

Description

VHA sends email surveys to everyone who receives outpatient services.

Quarterly data reported

Q3 2023

What we learned from this quarter's data:

The insights collected digitally enabled veterans to submit feedback about their outpatient services. As soon as Veterans pressed submit digitally, the insights were available in Veterans Signals (VSignals), VA’s CX deployment/collection/analysis software capability, within seconds. Veterans Health Administration used those insights to action plan for immediate to short-term service recovery and also for long-term program and systems improvements.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 8708097
Surveys offered: 2865148
Responses: 492892


Q2 2023

What we learned from this quarter's data:

The insights collected digitally enabled veterans to submit feedback about their outpatient services. As soon as Veterans pressed submit digitally, the insights were available in Veterans Signals (VSignals), VA’s CX deployment/collection/analysis software capability, within seconds. Veterans Health Administration used those insights to action plan for immediate to short-term service recovery and also for long-term program and systems improvements.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 8682652
Surveys offered: 2930060
Responses: 520867


Q1 2023

What we learned from this quarter's data:

The insights collected digitally enabled veterans to submit feedback about their outpatient services. As soon as Veterans pressed submit digitally, the insights were available in Veterans Signals (VSignals), VA’s CX deployment/collection/analysis software capability, within seconds. Veterans Health Administration used those insights to action plan for immediate to short-term service recovery and also for long-term program and systems improvements.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 11354605
Surveys offered: 2857776
Responses: 504976


Q4 2022

What we learned from this quarter's data:

The insights collected digitally enabled veterans to submit feedback about their outpatient services. As soon as Veterans pressed submit digitally, the insights were available in Veterans Signals (VSignals), VA’s CX deployment/collection/analysis software capability, within seconds. Veterans Health Administration used those insights to action plan for immediate to short-term service recovery and also for long-term program and systems improvements.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 8599472
Surveys offered: 3035994
Responses: 540180


Q3 2022

What we learned from this quarter's data:

VA continues to perform fairly strongly across its outpatient surveys in regards to satisfaction and trust.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 8639420
Surveys offered: 2300999
Responses: 376365


Q2 2022

What we learned from this quarter's data:

The insights collected digitally enabled veterans to submit feedback about their outpatient services. As soon as Veterans pressed submit digitally, the insights were available in Veterans Signals (VSignals), VA’s CX deployment/collection/analysis software capability, within seconds. Veterans Health Administration used those insights to action plan for immediate to short-term service recovery and also for long-term program and systems improvements.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 8663572
Surveys offered: 2050105
Responses: 345457


Q1 2022

What we learned from this quarter's data:

The insights collected digitally enabled veterans to submit feedback about their outpatient services. As soon as Veterans pressed submit digitally, the insights were available in Veterans Signals (VSignals), VA’s CX deployment/collection/analysis software capability, within seconds. Veterans Health Administration used those insights to action plan for immediate to short-term service recovery and also for long-term program and systems improvements.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 8965344
Surveys offered: 2009274
Responses: 330119


Q4 2021

What we learned from this quarter's data:

Veterans Health Administration (‘VHA’) continues to focus on improving trust across its outpatient and other health care services. There is renewed focus on Veteran’s safety across the enterprise with a new outpatient safety survey being added to VHA’s outpatient surveys. Further, VHA continues to monitor the impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having in regards to both customer experience and access to services.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 8738490
Surveys offered: 1894679
Responses: 308582


Q3 2021

What we learned from this quarter's data:

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 9085572
Surveys offered: 1893559
Responses: 306701


Q2 2021

What we learned from this quarter's data:

The insights collected digitally enabled veterans to submit feedback about their outpatient services. As soon as Veterans pressed submit digitally, the insights were available in Veterans Signals (VSignals), VA’s CX deployment/collection/analysis software capability, within seconds. Veterans Health Administration used those insights to action plan for immediate to short-term service recovery and also for long-term program and systems improvements.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 9707552
Surveys offered: 1774363
Responses: 320979


Q1 2021

What we learned from this quarter's data:

The insights collected digitally enabled veterans to submit feedback about their outpatient services. As soon as Veterans pressed submit digitally, the insights were available in Veterans Signals (VSIgnals), VA’s CX deployment/collection/analysis software capability, within seconds. Veterans Health Administration used those insights to action plan for immediate to short-term service recovery and also for long-term program and systems improvements.

Service details
Service provided: Outpatient Services
Transaction point: Follow-up Survey upon receiving Outpatient Services
Channel: email
People served: 8348464
Surveys offered: 1765965
Responses: 288290