Pull service locations, appointment options, and same day services through to Facility Locator

mmiddaugh commented 4 months ago

Value to Veterans

As a Veteran, I want to know if the service I seek is available by phone, virtually, or at a non-traditional location close to home. As a Veteran, I would like to see if appointments are required for a particular service or if I can visit without an appointment. As a Veteran, I want to know where I can be served same day, without an appointment.

Headlines

Business stakeholders - primarily VHA, Office of Community Care, and Lighthouse OCTO owner: Michelle Middaugh Is request tracked to an event or Congressional deadline? - No

Details

Who is the primary user?

Veterans and Beneficiaries

What are the business goals?

Help Veterans understand how a particular service is available (in-person visit to a VA facility vs virtually, by phone, and/or at a community location - and whether or not an appointment is required)
Data pertaining to service locations and appointment options may be used to support an initiative from the VHA Office of Healthcare Transformation (OHT) to increase visibility/utilization of same day services in VA facilities. These details could be used to support this type of search or filter in the Facility Locator if the data were available via Lighthouse.
VHA/Community Care/ATC is interested in identifying where virtual care is available as part of evaluating a Veteran's eligibility for Community care

Questions

For which services does this pertain? (Only urgent care/emergency department?) Do all parties have a shared definition/understanding of same day service? How might we make this discoverable for a facility if data is at service location level?

How does this map to our North Star?

Power twice as many interactions
CSAT improvement

Questions/Problems to solve

What is OCTO's role in this work?

As of May 2024, Drupal editors can indicate if services are available virtually or by phone for VA health and VA benefit services (VBA limited to those in the modernization project for Regional offices)
Will need to work with Lighthouse to add this data to the API and then determine how best to present the data in searches on the Facility Locator

What are the known risks?

Data accuracy
Shared understanding of service modalities
Representing service modalities in a meaningful and understandable way (especially the "may be available" scenarios)
Team capacity and competing priorities (both Sitewide-Facilities and Lighthouse)

Dependencies

This work is blocked by the availability of this data via Lighthouse API

department-of-veterans-affairs / va.gov-cms