[CONSIDER] Single source of truth for Caregiver data

[mmiddaugh]

Description

• As we move toward making CMS the source of truth for Facility services in Lighthouse v1, Caregiver services was identified as one of the outliers.
• Current source of truth for Lighthouse is the CARMA Website, which has a list of all the caregiver support programs and their locations, with telephone numbers, and addresses. (This site also links to the corresponding VAMC Caregiver pages)
• Data is also entered by local PAOs into CMS
• There are some differences between the CARMA website and the Caregiver support services data entered into CMS
  • As of 8/18/2023
    • CMS has 186 facility IDS with Caregiver service
    • Lighthouse has 142 facility IDs with Caregiver service
    • There are 4 facility IDs which are unique to Lighthouse and 48 unique to CMS (all of which appear to be because of parent-child facility hierarchy) - Link to analysis spreadsheet
• There have been previous conversations between Lighthouse and CARMA team about moving to CMS as the source of truth
• Per Patrick Bateman (VA PO), the CARMA website is the preferred source of truth as it represents the availability of Caregiver Support Program from the national perspective and because it is used by downstream systems
  • If non-official CARMA list data is used, Caregiver program applications may be routed incorrectly, resulting in processing delays, at a minimum and/or caregivers may misunderstand where services are available
  • The Caregiver application form will soon adopt Lighthouse v1 to supply the list of facilities in the dropdown field

Problem to solve

How might we determine the single source of truth for the Caregiver support program data and use it throughout the VA.gov ecosystem?

[mmiddaugh]

Lighthouse and CARMA will ultimately determine priority of this