[EPIC] Indian Health Services, Tribal Health Programs, and Urban Indian Organization Locations in the Facility Locator

[mmiddaugh]

Value to Veterans

AS A Veteran who is an American Indian and Alaska Native, I WANT to know if there are Indian Health Services (IHS), Tribal Health Programs (THP), and/or Urban Indian Organizations (UIO) facilities near me where I can get health care SO THAT I can find a provider who is right for me.

AS A member of a Veteran's health care team, I WANT to know about contracted Indian Health facilities, Tribal Health Programs, and/or Urban Indian Organizations (UIO) facilities SO THAT I can refer eligible Veterans there for care.

Headlines

Business stakeholders - primarily IVC OCTO owner: Michelle Middaugh PM: Fran Cross Is request tracked to an event or Congressional deadline? No

Details

Who are the primary users?

• Veterans and caregivers

What are the business goals?

• Help eligible Veterans find contracted Indian Health Services (IHS), Tribal Health Programs (THP), and/or Urban Indian Organizations (UIO) facilities where they can receive health services
• Migrate relevant content and deprecate legacy Teamsite pages

Questions

• Are eligible Veterans likely to search for these facilities or are they already aware?
• Will Lighthouse be interested in hosting this data some day?
• Are all/most IHS and THP locations available in Mapbox?

How does this map to our North Star?

• CSAT improvement

What is OCTO's role in this work?

• Determine the correct approach for pulling in existing data and keeping it fresh (currently in a CSV)
• Update the Facility Locator UX to allow Veterans to search for these types of health care locations, while making it clear that it is not available to all Veterans
• Create awareness for these new searches - i.e. via the Resources and Support page, Does VA cover Indian Health Service, Tribal Health Programs, and/or Urban Indian Organizations (UIO) care?. This page currently links to the Facility Locator generally, although these type of facilities are not available via search.

What are the known risks?

• Data accuracy and freshness
• Team capacity and competing priorities (both Sitewide-Facilities and Lighthouse)

Background

From the National Veteran Health Equity Report – American Indian or Alaska Native Veteran Chartbook, November 2022

• The numbers of people who identify as single race American Indian and Alaska Native and those who identify as American Indian and Alaska Native and another race both increased significantly between 2010 and 2020.
• American Indian or Alaska Native Veteran comprise 0.7% of all Veterans using VHA care in FY16-FY19.
• Geography of residence for American Indian or Alaska Native Veterans was almost evenly split between rural and urban areas.
• Overall, American Indian or Alaska Native Veterans were more likely than non-Hispanic White Veterans to have a military service-connected disability and were proportionately more likely to have a disability rating of 50-90% or 100%.
• American Indian and Alaska Native Veterans report experiencing more challenges with access to care and person-centered care when compared with non-Hispanic White Veterans, with more widespread disparities seen in the age 65 or older age group.
• The IHS-THP RAP Participating Facilities List is available on the IHS/THP/UIO Reimbursement Agreements Program–Information for Providers page
• VA expanded the scope of reimbursements in 2023/2024 to include Purchased/Referred Care (PRC), contracted travel, and direct care provided by I/T/U operated facilities.

Decision Log

Artifacts

(Links to initiative (if applicable), designs, prototypes, analtyics)

[mmiddaugh]

Additional info from SME:

• The data updates occasionally and they will want to provide an updated version (via excel) before we implement.

  • note from Michelle: we will discuss options for maintaining this data long-term

• The program is a statutorily required program and displaying the partnership between IHS/VA meets that goal. The program partners with Tribal facilities and reimburses them for care that they provided to Native Veterans.

• Will need a way to communicate that these locations provide tribal care, not VA care, that the VA is not involved in the coordination or delivery of care, and that Veterans do not need to engage the VA to use their native benefit.

• This care is not VA care and we do not want to give the impression that it is.

• The purpose of showing the map/locations is an awareness that they can use their tribal benefit (if they are eligible) at one of these facilities and VA will reimburse.

This program has indicated they would like to have a separate locator because of the above - will discuss our handling of community care.

[FranECross]

@mmiddaugh I wonder if we could the same (or something similar) auto-import process that Daniel implemented recently(ish) for Income Limits? I believe in that case, the excel doc is loaded onto an S3 bucket, and auto-ingested to be displayed in the Income Limits app.