Wyoming VA Center Takes Telehealth Services on the Road for Distant Vets

VA healthcare providers in Wyoming are adding telehealth services to their eye care program to serve distant veterans in the rural state.

The Cheyenne VA Medical Center has acquired a mobile health unit, which it’s now using to bring its Technology-based Eye Care Services (TECS) program on the road. The van, equipped with telemedicine tools, brings eye care services to veterans, rather than having them travel long distances tom access that care at the VA center.

“We’ve been able to establish a new paradigm for eye care in which a lot of the routine care can be done via telehealth,” Patricia Stepp, MD, an ophthalmologist at the Cheyenne VAMC, said in a press release. “Having a mobile avenue to do this helps bring our care to the veterans where they need it.”

The program is one of many in the VA’s toolbox to bring care to veterans, many of whom are older and dealing with chronic health conditions. The VA is the largest user of telehealth and mHealth services in the country, with a variety of platforms and tools addressing issues like chronic care management and behavioral health issues.

Sometimes those programs are developed at a national level, while others are launched by local care providers who see a gap in care and want to address it.

The Department of Veterans Affairs launched the TECS program in 2015, aiming to bring specialty eye care services to underserved veterans. There are some 40 programs now scattered across the country, based in VA sites.

In Wyoming, however, the VA’s outpatient clinics are too small to support the full TECS clinic, so staff at the Cheyenne VAMC decided to make the clinic mobile. The located an unused van in Louisiana, brought it back to Wyoming in 2020 and outfitted it with the technology need to provide telehealth services, including remote eye screenings.

Following a delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the van travelled in May to Wheatland, some 70 miles distant, to serve its first veterans.

Stepp says the mobile health program will travel to community-based outreach centers across the state to serve veterans who have problems accessing care or would otherwise go without. She also envisions the van travelling to other veteran service locations and community health centers, and says the program can be duplicated in other rural states.