In 2003, the VA implemented a national care coordination/home telehealth (CCHT) program providing non-institutional care (NIC) to patients with any of the chronic conditions: diabetes mellitus (DM), congestive heart failure (CHF), hypertension (HTN), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and depression.

The program’s model is case manager-based; the patient’s coordinator assigns the patient to the appropriate telehealth technology, provides training, reviews telehealth monitoring data, and provides active care or case management which includes communication with the patient’s physician.

In 2008, Darkins et al. reported the benefits from VHA’s CCHT program for a cohort of 17,025 patients (12% COPD patients) showing 25% reduction in bed days of care and 19% reduction in hospital admissions. Furthermore, 90% of patients accepted enrollment into the program and 86% were satisfied with it. The cost of CCHT intervention was $1,600 per patient per annum, substantially less than other non-institutional care programs and nursing home care offered by the VA.

The VA expanded its CCHT program into large telehealth networks that provided care to 497,342 patients in fiscal year 2012.

To learn more about VA telehealth, visit the VA Telehealth Services website