Photo: Luis Alvarez/Getty Image
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs took several steps in recent weeks to address historic administrative and operational challenges.
The department said nationwide expansion of its Enterprise Scheduling System has dramatically accelerated community care appointment bookings for veterans, while a new Veterans Health Administration artificial intelligence-driven platform from Salesforce is automating workflows to resolve challenges quickly.
The VA said it will also expand Mynd Immersive's virtual reality therapy to 45 additional centers to help veterans better manage chronic pain and mental health at home.
Of note, Charles Worthington, the department's chief technical officer and chief AI officer, announced his departure in March after nearly nine years leading numerous seminal efforts to modernize software, systems and veteran-facing digital tools.
VHA implements AI-powered enterprise operations
The VHA deployed an agentic AI-based operating system across more than 150 medical centers and outpatient facilities this week to streamline operations and improve care delivery, according to a March 26 announcement from Salesforce, the customer relationship management (CRM) platform giant.
The VA's new unified Slack communications system acts as a single "front door" for 370,000 VHA staff, connecting clinicians, administrators and caregivers, the company said.
The unified CRM platform uses AI to integrate real-time data insights and services to simplify incident response, reduce administrative burden and accelerate decision-making.
When the system flags a potential issue – such as egregious wait times at a VA medical facility or poor patient satisfaction – the AI automatically assembles a dedicated Slack channel, populates it with the relevant information, and pulls in relevant medical center directors and subject matter experts, Salesforce said.
"We use Slack as a connective performance-management layer that drives real work," said Josh Geiger, senior advisor to the VHA chief operating officer, in a statement. "It enables us to cut costs, create efficiencies and focus more time and energy on front-line veteran care."
Slack AI also summarizes chat histories, identifies improvement areas and surfaces details from past incidents that might help resolve the issue more quickly, the company noted.
"This strategy has enabled the VHA to move faster, identify trends across pockets of information and bring the learnings or best practices from every incident to any program or facility," added Greg Goins, the VA's acting chief operating officer.
Salesforce said the department is also exploring ways to pilot connecting the new system to VA Health Connect, the agency's 24/7 virtual contact center.
VR therapy rolling out to more VA medical centers
The VA is rolling out prescriptive virtual reality therapies across 45 VA medical centers nationwide through its Pain Management, Opioid Safety and Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, according to an announcement on Thursday.
VA doctors can prescribe VR therapy from Mynd Immersive, a platform vendor, to help veteran patients address chronic pain, stress, anxiety and isolation in at-home care settings.
Previously, the VA completed clinical studies using the VR platform at nine of its Pennsylvania-based medical centers and in a Mississippi home health program.
The studies demonstrated a 46.7% average reduction in pain intensity, a 37.39% average reduction in anxiety and a 34.52% average decrease in distress levels, Mynd said.
The expanded VA rollout also involves Meta, the social tech giant, and other clinical-grade content producers to grow its library of original immersive experiences for veterans, Mynd said.
In addition to muscle relaxation, breathing and neuroscience-based chronic pain management programs, content created for veterans includes "honor flights," memorial visits and the targeted experience "Virtual Vietnam: A Path to Peace."
"It gives doctors and clinicians a powerful new digital tool that is highly effective and scalable," said Chris Brickler, Mynd's CEO and cofounder, in a statement.
VA expanding community care booking system
Last month, the VA announced that all facilities now have External Provider Scheduling (EPS) technology up and running, helping to schedule community care appointments faster.
To book community care appointments, VA employees often had to make numerous calls to multiple community care providers and relay that information back to veterans before booking a medical appointment.
Last month, the VA said that because it had deployed the EPS system nationwide at the end of last year, 27,000 community care providers, including 78 medical specialties, are now participating free of charge.
VA employees book as many as 25 appointments per day. Previously, a single VA employee could only book a handful of community care appointments per day, the department said.
Scheduling software challenges have long plagued the VA both internally and externally.
The EPS system was initially rolled out in 2024 to 16 VA medical centers, according to the VA's Provider Advisor newsletter. Full deployment of the EPS system last year has meant less waiting time for veterans, the department said.
"When President Trump signed the MISSION Act, veterans eligible for community care were guaranteed the right to choose the healthcare that's best for them, whether at a VA facility or a community provider," said VA Secretary Doug Collins in the department's press release.
The VA added that it seeks to connect thousands of additional community care providers to EPS this year.
VA's CTO/CAIO departs for the AI frontier
Charles Worthington, now former VA CTO and CAIO, announced in a social media post on March 12 that he had departed the department.
Recounting his journey at the VA, Worthington said that when he joined in 2017, the department's digital service team didn’t have an institutional home and the office of CTO didn't exist.
He credited more than 100 engineers, designers, architects and project managers for modernizing VA.gov, launching its mobile app, expanding access to generative AI across the organization, scaling decision support and other AI tools, addressing the notorious VA case application backlog and more over his years at the department.
Worthington typically made himself available to the media during his VA tenure to discuss digital transformation at the nation's largest healthcare provider organization, whether that was offering his advice on succeeding with healthcare AI or talking about the development of the VA's mobile app as part of its larger digital transformation efforts.
"I came to government to close the gap between what the best companies in the world were doing with technology and the way our government delivers services," Worthington said when he announced his departure. "I'm proud to say our team made a dent."
Last year, Worthington told Healthcare IT News about adding the CAIO role to his work as CTO and being "out there publicly sharing" the department's AI use cases for problem-solving.
"We talk in detail about all of these use cases publicly," he said. "Anyone can go to our website and see this full inventory of AI use cases; and I'm proud of that, because it positions the VA as one of the most transparent health systems in the country regarding the use of AI."
While Worthington did not specify his next role in the post, he said he would continue to work on the frontier of AI.
"We are in the early innings of the most important technology shift since the internet," he said in the social media post. "The deep integration of AI into the systems that power how we live, work and experience critical services has barely begun, and I plan to be building at this frontier at scale."
On Friday, the VA confirmed reports that George Waddington is serving as acting CTO and Kimberly McManus, the department's deputy CTO of AI, has stepped in as acting CAIO and deputy CTO.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
