Finding new, innovative ways to connect with Veterans and provide the best health care possible has always been a strong pursuit at South Texas VA, which recently found a unique method for providing tele palliative care and tele Long COVID care through telehealth across the country. To accomplish this, South Texas VA became the first health care system within its VISN to receive the Nationally Designated Telehealth Hub (NDTH) designation.
With telehealth, Veterans are able to connect to care with their VA care teams and specialists. And with the NDTH designation, South Texas VA is now able to take it a step further to provide access to care to Veterans throughout the country.
Nurse Kimberly Oakman is one of the clinicians leading this mission and shared how South Texas VA provides palliative care via telehealth unlike anyone else. She highlighted the significant need to obtain this designation and provide this unique care to Veterans.
“To be able to provide this service for Veterans… the support and education is priceless. We’re excited for who we will be able to reach and provide services to,” said Oakman.
Access to rural Veterans
According to the Office of Connected Care, NDTHs enable the sharing of health care resources through telehealth across VA medical facilities.
The South Texas team understands the added difficulty rural Veterans face with chronic medical conditions and having to make the trek to a medical facility.
Just like palliative care, South Texas VA understood the need for tele Long COVID care as Veterans began experiencing long-term effects from COVID, even years later.
Dr. Hanh Trinh, medical director for VISN 17 Nationally Designated Tele Long COVID and Tele Palliative Care, has worked alongside Oakman to ensure the correct structure was built to offer both health services, leading to the NDTH designation and improving access to this care nationwide.
Trinh highlighted how this designation will assist Patient Aligned Care Team providers as hundreds of thousands of Veterans have been diagnosed with COVID since 2020. Out of that group, approximately 4-7% of those Veterans will suffer from Long COVID.
“We now have the ability to proactively reach out to Veterans at these facilities, find them and then help them with any underlying symptoms they may be having as it really impairs their quality of life. We want to do what we can for our Veterans,” said Trinh.
While the Long COVID program has evolved since March 2020, the very first patient—Army Veteran Lorenzo Baker—is still grateful to this day for Trinh and her team. “They were very compassionate and really helped me to get through all that stuff that was coming at me. They kept my mind right, they kept me level and on the ground,” Baker shared.
Looking ahead
This designation spotlights South Texas VA’s dedication to providing the best care possible to its Veterans and breaking barriers to do so.
Veterans who are interested in further reviewing their options for tele Palliative Care or tele Long COVID can speak with their Primary Care Providers.
Veterans experiencing long COVID can find resources.
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Ironically, many of us are not yet in that state and require medical services which we cannot get in the South Texas VA Healthcare System. They have systemically cut back on our Community Care without notification, our PCPs quit and we are not notified, the electronic messaging and calls are delayed or the message never gets to the Veteran and caregivers of Veterans have been told to not call or complain or they would lose their caregiver status. In “Military City” USA as San Antonio calls itself, Veterans are fighting everyday for care in a system which is strained to the max. There is a lack of physicians/mental health professionals and the ability to get into pain management and other specialty care is atrocious. Our records are not uploaded in the system from our community providers, we have to file FOIA requests for records that should be available on “Blue Button” (which takes months to get). Battle for health with the VA/Tricare is worse than combat. At least in combat, you know your enemy and have a better chance of receiving medical care!