BVA use of IMH for Hearings vt

[ken-non]

As a Veteran with an appeals hearing I need a way to check in virtually so I can socially distance

As a BVA Hearing Officer I need a way to organize attendees so hearings can run smoothly

Overview

The IMH Tool ( #20664 ), which helps veterans socially distance when checking in for VA Health Center appointments, could also help the BVA track Veteran attendance for appeals hearings.

Why

What used to be an in-person check in at a BVA facility has now become a confusing digital process. The IMH tool presents an automated way for Hearing Officers to ensure all parties are present and ready. That helps hearings happen on schedule and improves confidence in the BVA Appeals process.

Status

Currently in discovery for basic technical feasibility.

Stakeholders

• Troy Hamilton, Director, Account Management Office
• John Gosnell, Supervisory Computer Engineer
• Dave Dunphy, Sup Program Management SPC

How

Hearings are scheduled in caseflow, and then happen one of three ways:

• in person
• at facility but virtual (video link)
• fully virtual (home to home)

These hearings require a judge, a veteran, and a Hearing Officer / Field Rep Coordinator to proceed. The Hearing Officer or Field Rep Coordinator is the main point of contact for Veterans.

When a veteran texts "Here" to the specified number, they're added to the IMH queue. The Hearing Officer can then set them up to connect to the judge.

Intersections

• BVA Team
• IMH ( #20664 ) - basic tool we're repurposing
• VEText Portal
• VAprofile team - phone number lookup

Future State

• include link to the teleappointment in the IMH emails (thanks for checking in + link)
• Support for more than one hearing room - this gets into the queue management issues. veteran shows up in intake, then they are queued into a waiting room then hearing room.
• an indication on the patient tracking page that the veteran is in the waiting room
• A way for veterans to be notified if hearings are delayed

Notes

22 Mar 2021 Refinement

Case number is 7 digit - everyone has a case number - this can authenticate the user against the phone number. This week authentication & answer for 7 digits. need meeting with rob, andy, shane etc. get scheduled with paras.

Monday 15 Mar 2021

No phone numbers as normal function - VBMS is how they get phone numbers currently. Do they want to be able to access the information from Caseflow? that would be more development

Technical Discovery Meeting 12 Mar 2021

Currently the team has had one meeting with administrative end users - Shane has rough diagrams. What's needed now is an assessment of what needs to be modified to allow the BVA to use IMH

From our understanding, BVA has one basic flow that could be addressed for all of the different types of interactions they want to cover with IMH - attendance at hearings, regardless of type.

• 3-4 types of hearings

• • face to face
• • Video Conference (the Vet goes to a regional office and joins a video call there)
• • Virtual-Virtual (Vet joins a video call not from a regional office (ie Veteran, representative, judge all joining from different places)

• Each has a person who runs them - "hearing officer" or "field rep coordinator"

• They wanted to have a view where they could see everything around the country or limit it just to what's available to them. There is a structure to regional offices "regions?" (need to clarify)

Assumption: As far as organization as shown on the Patient Tracking page, we could have one instance (ala a single VAMC in IMH now) and the folders could have different locations assuming there is only one hearing type.

Within the portal, clinic = regional office. if we get the phone number and the location we add them to the regional office and they are plugged into the IMH process from there.

Basic process

Veteran would text "here" to predefined number, we need to look up the phone (we'd need an api), based on that we hit Caseflow to get the location and put them in a queue for IMH.

Caseflow API

Currently BVA only supports querying by file number/SSN. Veteran phone numbers are not stored in Caseflow. ( Via #appeals-product DSVA slack 12 Mar 2021)

That might be a hard stop.

Could we use VAprofile?

• yes if VAprofile allows query via phone. we have a feature request in with the VA Profile team - ticket is submitted but no updates.

wasn't our percentage high for how many phone numbers we could get off of CDW?

• we might come up with something but we would still have potentially 10% of veterans out of luck.
• Currently if we don't find the veteran or phone number in VHA, we send the veteran a response letting them know that we couldn't identify their phone number in the system.

Misc

• Could we ask them to provide a last name?
• sounds like we need the caseID to trigger the api - do veterans even know it?
• For now the hearing reminders are working with a confirmation code in an email / text and using that to check in - Paras received a test of one of these.

Ultimately, do we have to do this integration right away or is it something we should consider blocked until we can use VAprofile to query phone numbers?

Authentication

To move on, let's assume we can get the patient from standing up an instance of VEText just for VBA - what about administrator authentication? is that doable with SSO and the NT Username? is that doable for non-VistA folks?

• we can certainly get the NT username. right now we have a table set up with elevated access to VEText. We could add a NT username column and what access number they have. that wouldn't get too difficult. as long as they can authenticate with PIV.

how would you hit portalva.gov? some kind of url variable?

• potentially, or if the VistA id is missing, the field in SSO data is what passes any linked VistA. it's possible the user may not have the account linked to Vista.
• it's not SSOI, but using a redirect with the NT webserver. There are traits to see if there are ways to identify users on the BVA side. is there a user trait we can use to see they are associated with BVA or VBA (rob to follow up on that).
• there's also VACO

Greenfield

Greenfield would be

• include link to the teleappointment in the IMH emails (thanks for checking in + link)
• Support for more than one hearing room - this gets into the queue management issues. veteran shows up in intake, then they are queued into a waiting room then hearing room.
• an indication on the patient tracking page that the veteran is in the waiting room

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Folded Tickets

172

Description Scheduling hearings with the Board of Veterans Appeals using IMH

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Original Ticket:

"Summary: BVA leadership is interested in using IMH to allow Veterans to virtually check-in to their appeal hearings.

To Do List: @Robert-Durkin / @shane-elliott / @Paras-Shah3 to finalize updates for DEMO with DVC Santora. BVA would like some updates to the portal to make it more ""BVA friendly.""

Update 02/01:

• F/U with Shane re: brief to BVA Chairperson

Update 12/14:

114

"To Do List: @shane-elliott to f/u with Charles re: scheduling module for VBA.

Question(s):

1. Does the VEText team want to develop a scheduling module for VBA sites? Transferred on 4 Mar 2021. Original Column: In Progress"

-BVA team will regroup with VBA team to determine if VBA is procuring a separate product or IMH can be leveraged.
-If they choose IMH, they would also like to discuss how funding fits into this development (i.e VIPR, etc.).
-Some BVA locations are within VBA facilities.

Transferred on 4 Mar 2021. Original Column: In Progress, Original Labels: bva, discovery"

[shanemelliott]

[shanemelliott]

[ambikaroos]

Mural: https://app.mural.co/t/adhoccorporateworkspace2583/m/adhoccorporateworkspace2583/1616512238601/8d32dc51e9e00520b1da0b46caea142590240015

[pcshah1026]

Below, you will find the data VEText receives via the Caseflow API:

{ "hearings": [ { "address": "15 New Sudbury Street JFK Federal Building", "appeal": "182fd411-c770-44c8-8491-0de36ac6f92c", "city": "Boston", "facility_id": "vba_301", "first_name": "John", "last_name": "Veteran", "participant_id": "12345", "hearing_location": "Boston", "is_virtual": false, "room": "123", "scheduled_for": "2019-07-24T13:30:00.000-04:00", "ssn": "666456999", "state": "MA", "timezone": "America/New_York", "zip_code": "02203" }, { "address": "123 Main St.", "appeal": "d69d7c3f-fd68-45aa-9bb9-556622fd557b", "city": "Providence", "facility_id": "vba_999", "first_name": "Jane", "last_name": "Veteran", "participant_id": "23456", "hearing_location": "Providence", "is_virtual": false, "room": "456", "scheduled_for": "2019-07-24T13:30:00.000-04:00", "ssn": "666456000", "state": "RI", "timezone": "America/New_York", "zip_code": "12345" } ]