Access and Community Care Engagement Network Team (ACCENT)

Priorities | Impacts | Promising Practices

May 4, 2026

One of VA’s priorities is to ensure that every Veteran is able to obtain timely, high-quality, and appropriate care. Research on Veterans’ access to VA and community care identifies barriers and facilitators to care, evaluates the impact of policy and program changes, and informs data-driven improvements in how VA organizes, delivers, and coordinates care.

The Access and Community Care Engagement Network Team (ACCENT) Consortium of Research (CORE), funded by Health Systems Research (HSR), supports practical improvements in access and community care for Veterans nationwide by bringing together VA researchers, operational leaders, Veterans, and caregivers to identify access- and community care-related priorities and foster collaboration. By strengthening communication between VA researchers and program partners, ACCENT advances the timeliness, rigor, and impact of VA access and community care research. Additionally, ACCENT supports researchers’ access to high-quality data and works to ensure that researchers are aware of evolving policy needs, while keeping program leaders and policymakers updated on the latest research evidence.

ACCENT CORE Partners

• Office of Integrated Veteran Care
• Office of Nursing Services
• Office of Care Management and Social Work
• Office of Rural Health
• Office of Connected Care

ACCENT CORE Priorities

• Align research with national access and community care needs.
• Build and sustain a national network of researchers and operational partners with a shared commitment to improving access to healthcare for Veterans.
• Strengthen partnerships across VA program offices such as the Office of Integrated Veteran Care (IVC), Office of Rural Health, and other partners to coordinate research priorities and data needs.
• Support the next generation of VA health systems researchers through mentored development with experienced VA researchers and operational leaders.
• Provide and continuously improve access to high-quality data for advancing timely, rigorous, and policy-relevant access and community care research.
• Integrate Veteran and caregiver perspectives into research through structured engagement to inform study design, conduct, and dissemination.
• Strategically disseminate research findings and impacts to Veterans, VA operational partners, and policymakers to inform decisions and improve access to care.

ACCENT CORE Activities and Impacts

ACCENT plays a critical role in connecting VA’s research and operations communities to enhance Veterans’ access to timely, high-quality care. Examples of impactful ACCENT work include:

• Developed and maintains the Access and Community Care Active Projects Inventory (ACC-API), a searchable database of HSR and QUERI projects active in FY2022 or later. The ACC-API, along with ACCENT’s efforts to promote collaboration and communication between VA researchers and operational partners, helps ensure that research is aligned with national access and community care needs.
  • ACCENT investigators use the ACC-API to review VA research on access and community care to identify what is known, where gaps remain, and where new investment is needed. The ACC-API helps shape national research priorities and ensures that research findings support efforts to improve how Veterans receive care.
  • ACCENT is working with VA’s Office of Rural Health (ORH) to integrate ORH-funded access and community care projects within the ACC-API, which will enhance the comprehensiveness of the database.
  • The ACC-API supports VA Central Office responses to congressional inquiries regarding VA-funded access and community care research.
• Completed a scoping review of VA community care research, “Increasing Veterans’ Access to Health Care After Legislated Expansion of VA Community Care Programs,” which summarizes existing evidence and identifies gaps in the literature. Additional details and the forthcoming preprint will be available on ACCENT’s website.
• Hosts monthly calls with IVC leadership and ACCENT researchers to better understand the research needs of IVC and future directions of VA community care. The meetings keep IVC leaders informed of research projects and findings and help identify focus areas for HSR researchers based on IVC priorities.
• Holds Veteran and Caregiver Engagement Panel (VCEP) meetings approximately five to six times per year to discuss care access topics driven by ongoing research (e.g., specialty care, community care, suicide prevention) and strengthen Veterans’ engagement in research. ACCENT’s VCEP ensures that Veterans’ experiences and priorities inform research on access and community care and help align research with what matters most to Veterans and their families. ACCENT tracks researchers’ use of VCEP feedback.
• Helps investigators use high-quality data related to access and community care.
  • Provides resources on key datasets such as the Integrated Veteran Care Consolidated Data Sets (IVC CDS).
  • Completed approximately 350 consultations with researchers in FY2025 to address study design, data sources and access, and analytic methods.
  • Provides guidance on important datasets such as Medicare and Medicaid.
  • Works with IVC, HSR’s Health Economics Resource Center (HERC), VA Information Resource Center (VIReC), and VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) to improve data quality and researchers’ access to data.
    • Assisted IVC and other stakeholders with validation of external facing datasets used by researchers (e.g., validated and documented IVC_CDS_Referrals_Fact and CC_DimPatientDemographic tables, assisted VA’s Geriatrics & Extended Care Data & Analysis Center with a transition to IVC_CDS data, helped VINCI identify and obtain an updated road network from DoD, helped HERC with documentation on calculating inpatient cost).
  • Developed and disseminated data guides and documentation (e.g., how to calculate Veterans’ drive time to care, data-related FAQs) to aid community care research and standardize dataset use across operations and research groups.
• Shares information, identifies operational needs, and accelerates studies through ACCENT’s national network of researchers and operational partners to improve Veterans’ access to VA care and community care.
  • Synthesizes and disseminates research findings from VA research on access and community care across VA via reports, quarterly newsletters, and HSR Cyberseminars. This helps ensure that program offices, researchers, and other stakeholders have timely information to guide decisions.
  • Disseminates information to ACCENT’s national research network about funding opportunities, data resources, and operational needs, and connects researchers with operations leaders to discuss emerging topics and explore new funding mechanisms.

Key Findings from Recent Research

• Evaluating the impact of virtual specialty care: VA’s Clinical Resource Hub as a case study. This research uses VA’s Clinical Resource Hub (CRH) program as a framework for evaluating virtual specialty care. The CRH initiative extends access to clinical services in underserved geographic areas via telehealth, making it easier for Veterans to receive VA care and avoid fragmented community care. The scalable evaluation method described in this study informs the optimal, equitable integration of telehealth into specialty care delivery within and outside of VA.
• Examining complementary and integrative health therapies for pain. Providing effective complementary and integrative health (CIH) services to Veterans is a priority for VA. This study compared the effectiveness of three CIH services—acupuncture, chiropractic, and medical massage therapy—delivered by VA and community providers to lessen Veterans’ chronic pain severity. The study found that CIH therapies delivered by VA or community providers can potentially reduce chronic pain.
• Measuring urgent care prescriptions dispensed through VA community care. This study found that Veterans increasingly received non-VA prescriptions through urgent care centers in the community during the study period, highlighting the need for improved clinical decision support for non-VA prescriptions and the potential of integrated data systems to monitor and enhance medication safety and coordination within VA.
• Examining the community care experiences of Veterans with mental health conditions. In this survey study of Veterans who received VA-purchased community care, those diagnosed with mental health conditions reported lower ratings of community care across all measured domains (e.g., overall satisfaction, clinician communication, care coordination), and these differences persisted over time.

Recent VA research continues to show that while access to care has expanded, coordination across VA and community care remains a challenge. Emerging evidence points to the importance of structured care coordination, improved information exchange, and enhanced navigation support, though these approaches are still evolving.

An ACCENT CORE team is working with VA’s IVC, Office of Nursing Services, and Office of Care Management and Social Work to identify best practices for care coordination and data science for quality monitoring to inform nurse-led care management support for high-risk Veterans who rely on community care providers.

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