After weeks of negotiating, lawmakers in the House and Senate have reached an agreement on legislation to overhaul the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system. The $17 billion plan includes expansions of telemedicine services to help improve care access and reduce the wait times that have been the center of the scandal that's rocked the department in recent months.
The new legislation would require the VA to ensure every mobile veterans' center and every mobile medical center is capable of providing telemedicine services. The department would also be required to include analysis of the effectiveness of these telemedicine efforts in the department's annual report.
Currently, the VA has 300 mobile veterans centers and 70 mobile medical units, which are capable of handling more complex cases than the mobile veterans centers, according to Politico. The use of telemedicine is already on the rise at the VA — last year, 11 percent of veterans received telemedicine services, up from about 9 percent in 2012, according to the report.
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