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Toward the development of national telehealth services: the role of Veterans Health Administration and future directions for research.
Abstract
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA)
has emerged as a national and international leader in the delivery and research of
telehealth-based treatment. Several unique characteristics of care in VA settings
intersect to create an ideal environment for telehealth modalities and research. However,
the value of telehealth experience and initiatives in VA settings is limited if telehealth
strategies cannot be widely exported to other public or private systems. Whereas a
hierarchical organization, such as VA, can innovate and fund change relatively quickly
based on provider and patient preferences and a growing knowledge base, other health
provider organizations and third-party payers may likely require replicable scientific
findings over time before incremental investments will be made to create infrastructure,
reform regulatory barriers, and amend laws to accommodate expansion of telehealth
modalities. Accordingly, large-scale scientifically rigorous telehealth research in
VHA settings is essential not only to investigate the efficacy of existing and future
telehealth practices in VHA, but also to hasten the development of telehealth infrastructure
in private and other public health settings. We propose an expanded partnership between
the VA, NIH, and other funding agencies to investigate creative and pragmatic uses
of telehealth technology. To this end, we identify six specific areas of research
we believe to be particularly relevant to the efficient development of telehealth
modalities in civilian and military contexts outside VHA.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Diffusion of InnovationHealth Services Research
Humans
Telemedicine
United States
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3294Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1089/tmj.2009.0144Publication Info
Tuerk, Peter W; Fortney, John; Bosworth, Hayden B; Wakefield, Bonnie; Ruggiero, Kenneth
J; Acierno, Ron; & Frueh, B Christopher (2010). Toward the development of national telehealth services: the role of Veterans Health
Administration and future directions for research. Telemed J E Health, 16(1). pp. 115-117. 10.1089/tmj.2009.0144. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3294.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Hayden Barry Bosworth
Professor in Population Health Sciences
Dr. Bosworth is a health services researcher and Deputy Director of the Center of
Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation (ADAPT) at the Durham
VA Medical Center. He is also Vice Chair of Education and Professor of Population
Health Sciences. He is also a Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Nursing at Duke
University Medical Center and Adjunct Professor in Health Policy and Administration
at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Cha

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