Improving Veteran Engagement with Virtual Care Technologies: a Veterans Health Administration State of the Art Conference Research Agenda.

Haderlein TP, Guzman-Clark J, Dardashti NS, McMahon N, Duran EL, Haun JN, Robinson SA, Blok AC, Cutrona SL, Lindsay JA, Armstrong CM, Nazi KM, Shimada SL, Wilck NR, Reilly E, Kuhn E, Hogan TP. Improving Veteran Engagement with Virtual Care Technologies: a Veterans Health Administration State of the Art Conference Research Agenda. Journal of general internal medicine. 2024 Jan 22.

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

Although the availability of virtual care technologies in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) continues to expand, ensuring engagement with these technologies among Veterans remains a challenge. VHA Health Services Research and Development convened a Virtual Care State of The Art (SOTA) conference in May 2022 to create a research agenda for improving virtual care access, engagement, and outcomes. This article reports findings from the Virtual Care SOTA engagement workgroup, which comprised fourteen VHA subject matter experts representing VHA clinical care, research, administration, and operations. Workgroup members reviewed current evidence on factors and strategies that may affect Veteran engagement with virtual care technologies and generated key questions to address evidence gaps. The workgroup agreed that although extensive literature exists on factors that affect Veteran engagement, more work is needed to identify effective strategies to increase and sustain engagement. Workgroup members identified key priorities for research on Veteran engagement with virtual care technologies through a series of breakout discussion groups and ranking exercises. The top three priorities were to (1) understand the Veteran journey from active service to VHA enrollment and beyond, and when and how virtual care technologies can best be introduced along that journey to maximize engagement and promote seamless care; (2) utilize the meaningful relationships in a Veteran''s life, including family, friends, peers, and other informal or formal caregivers, to support Veteran adoption and sustained use of virtual care technologies; and (3) test promising strategies in meaningful combinations to promote Veteran adoption and/or sustained use of virtual care technologies. Research in these priority areas has the potential to help VHA refine strategies to improve virtual care user engagement, and by extension, outcomes.