Sociodemographic and Clinical Characteristics Associated With Veterans' Digital Needs.

Importance: Telehealth can expand access to care, but digital needs present barriers for some patients.

Objective: To investigate sociodemographic and clinical associations of digital needs among veterans.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This quality improvement study used data collected between July 2021 and September 2023 from Assessing Circumstances and Offering Resources for Needs (ACORN), a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) initiative to systematically screen for, comprehensively assess, and address social risks and social needs.

Exploring Contactless Vital Signs Collection in Video Telehealth Visits Among Veterans Affairs Providers and Patients: Pilot Usability Study.

Background: To expand veterans' access to health care, the Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Connected Care explored a novel software feature called "Vitals" on its VA Video Connect telehealth platform. Vitals uses contactless, video-based, remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) through the infrared camera on veterans' smartphones (and other devices) to automatically scan their faces to provide real-time vital statistics on screen to both the provider and patient.

Objective: This study aimed to assess VA clinical provider and veteran patient attitudes regarding the usability of Vitals.

Evaluation of the Veterans Health Administration's Digital Divide Consult for Tablet Distribution and Telehealth Adoption: Cohort Study.

Background: Video telehealth offers a mechanism to help Veterans Health Administration (VHA) patients overcome health care access barriers; however, many veterans lack a suitable device and sufficient internet connectivity. To address disparities in technology access, VHA established a Connected Device Program that offers veterans loaned video-capable tablets and internet service. In 2020, VHA introduced a national Digital Divide Consult to facilitate and standardize referrals for this resource.

Primary care team characteristics associated with video use: a retrospective national study at the Veterans Health Administration.

Objective: To examine primary care (PC) team members' characteristics associated with video use at the Veterans Health Administration (VA).

Methods: VA electronic data were used to identify PC team characteristics associated with any video-based PC visit, during the three-year study period (3/15/2019-3/15/2022). Multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression models on repeated yearly observations were used, adjusting for patient- and healthcare system-level characteristics, and study year.

Implementation of Video-Based Care in Interdisciplinary Primary Care Settings at the Veterans Health Administration: Qualitative Study.

Background: With the rapid shift to telehealth, there remains a knowledge gap in how video-based care is implemented in interdisciplinary primary care (PC) settings.

Objective: The objective of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how video telehealth services were implemented in PC from the perspectives of patients and interdisciplinary PC team members at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) 2 years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: We applied a positive and negative deviance approach and selected the 6% highest (n=8) and the 6% lowest (n=8) video-using PC sites in 2022 from a total of 130 VHA medical centers nationally.