Atlas Research’s ability to modernize legacy operations is best illustrated by our work for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where we are helping execute on all five of the department’s top priorities. The first is providing greater choice for Veterans, and we’re deeply involved in one of biggest choices of all: allowing Veterans to age at home. This is the kind of complex equation that Atlas excels at solving. We have deep knowledge of health care delivery, the Veteran population, and the challenges of accessing health care in rural communities where millions of Veterans live. We have also trained tens of thousands of family members to care for Veterans at home.
At the same time, Atlas is helping VA modernize its infrastructure, enhance core services, break down bureaucratic walls, and better communicate its value to Veterans. Below we share some of our recent examples of organizational transformation at VA.
Scaling up a major success in improving service to Veterans
In 2017 Atlas Research helped the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) rapidly scale up one of its biggest recent successes: allowing Veterans to schedule appointments for medical specialties without first seeing a primary care physician. It’s an outstanding example of how Atlas is helping the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) succeed with top priorities, including giving Veterans greater choice and enhancing services at the core of VA’s mission.
Atlas originally helped VHA launch “patient self- referral direct scheduling” (PSDS) in 2016 for audiology and optometry care – two of the specialty offerings available in 143 participating VHA facilities. The results were dramatic: wait times for appointments fell by two to three weeks, and primary care physicians were freed from 16,000 “pass- through” patient visits a month.
By the end of 2017, VHA was able to offer PSDS for specialty clinics including podiatry, nutrition and food services, and amputees and wheelchair- bound patients. In 2018, the option will extend to oncology services, mammography screenings, weight management, smoking cessation, PACT clinical pharmacy specialist services, orthotics and prosthetics, and social work. As Veterans get better service and gain greater control over their health care, VHA becomes more efficient and its primary care physicians become more productive.
Modernizing digital solutions that cut through complexity to improve customer service
Imagine if you decided to visit a new doctor, insurer, lender, or financial advisor, and they could instantly call up an accurate, approved, up-to-date digital profile for you. Imagine if you changed your address or took a spouse’s name, and all your service providers instantly had the new information.
That’s what’s coming for the 9 million U.S. Veterans who use services offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) – and the 375,000 VA employees who serve them. A sophisticated data architecture developed by Atlas Research for the Veterans Experience Office (VEO) gives every Veteran a master customer record across all lines of business, including health care, education and training, insurance, lending, disability compensation, and more.
As VA developed these services, it also amassed more than 200 contact centers and more than 1700 sites of care, many with their own databases. The new data architecture syncs them all, so that contact and military service data for Veterans will be correct wherever they go within VA. When this data is updated anywhere, it will be automatically updated everywhere. In addition to improving customer service for Veterans, the new master customer record is also eliminating costly operating problems of the past, such as postage wasted on misaddressed mail.
Enabling Veterans to choose home and community for covered health care
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) needs just two words to state its first priority for improving Veterans’ health care experience: “greater choice.” Atlas Research is helping deliver on one of the biggest promises of that priority: enabling Veterans to receive care at home, from providers inside and outside the VA itself.
Atlas began tackling this challenge in 2011, with the advent of VA’s National Veteran Caregiver Training Program (NVCTP). Under NVCTP, Atlas and its partner organizations have trained and certified more than 40,000 unpaid family caregivers who look after post-9/11 Veterans. Atlas further engaged with Veterans and their caregivers through projects with, and support of, the Easter Seals organization and the Elizabeth Dole Foundation.
Atlas also supports a contract to help VA accelerate and expand its Veteran-Directed Home and Community-Based Care program, which enables family- or community-based caregivers to receive compensation from VA. Atlas is providing financial analysis, policy analysis, technical assistance, and training, and also providing internal controls to make sure that both Veterans and VA are benefiting from the program as planned.
The continuing, shared success of both of these contracts paved the way for an exciting new contract awarded to Atlas in 2017. Choose Home is an ambitious initiative to give Veterans, caregivers, and families a unified plan for keeping an aging or severely injured Veteran in their own home if they don’t want to move into an institution. The Atlas team is supporting Choose Home through three work streams: matching homecare needs to VA resources; facilitating plan development with organizations inside and outside VA; and establishing a VA Center of Excellence for Veteran homecare.