Discovery: How to add VA Health Chat as a link on MHV Home

[wesrowe]

Description

User story

As a Cartography team member, I want to figure out how we would add a link to VA Health Chat to MHV Home that is visible only to eligible Veterans when the service is available, so that we can implement smoothly.

Notes

• Kaitlin intro thread
• API is probably: VA Health Chat/CirrusMD API
• Slack thread here includes some information about the oauth authentication process to the Health Chat API & names a key VA stakeholder for routing any business-related questions about the service (Hugo Padilla). Patrick requests that we cc him on any communications to Hugo.

Possible tasks:

• [ ] Review Kaitlin's discovery Mural here
• [ ] Figure out business logic questions (reach out to Hugo Padilla via VA email or Teams - and cc Kaitlin & Patrick if needed)

Acceptance criteria

• Documented in this ticket, the attached epic, or implementation ticket #86576:
  • What is the API, what info can we get from it?
  • How would we determine if a usr is eligible to use Health Chat?
  • How would we determine whether the service is available?
• Ensured next step is ticketed – i.e., #86576 is ready or created a new ticket (e.g., further discovery around ux issues)

[carlosfelix2]

VA Health Chat website: https://mobile.va.gov/app/va-health-chat Not to be confused with the Virtual Agent Web Chat

Health chat training material: https://mobile.va.gov/sites/default/files/documents/hopat1994-va-health-chat-at-a-glance-508_final-1.pdf

Features of the chat:

• Find your closest VA facility
• Schedule an appointment*
• Refill a VA prescription
• Send a non-urgent message to your health care team - VA Health Chat does not connect the user directly to their VA care team

Questions to answer:

1. How to determine a user is eligible for Health Chat? a. Per Hugo Padilla on an email to Patrick June 14, 2024: The VA Health Chat/CirrusMD API can be used to return a list of VA Chat services/plans that are currently available to a particular patient. b. Kaitlin Fink - Unknown what the true definition of a "plan" is. Kaitlin Fink thinks the "plans" are the types a user has access to: Virtual Clinic Visit (Urgent Care), Clinical Triage, Scheduling and Administration, and Pharmacy. The plans are based on what Veterans Integrated Services Network (VISN) they are associated with. The goal is for all VISNs to support all 4 but they aren't there yet. All VISNs have at least one healthchat plan available. It is specific support per VISN not by facility.
2. What is the link we will use in the Landing Page to the chat tool? a. @carlosfelix2 - Link to browser based chat: https://veteran.apps.va.gov/users/v2/login?redirect_uri=/cirrusmd from public website.
3. How to determine at what times the chat is supported? a. Potentially use the VA Health Chat/CirrusMD API for this. b. Potentially each service/plan has different hours. Which service/plan are we linking to? @carlosfelix2 - I am thinking the user needs to choose which one as per how the chat works today.
4. What is the authentication for the VA Health Chat/CirrusMD API? a. Per Hugo Padilla on an email to Patrick June 14, 2024: Believe it is Oauth authentication. b. Per Hugo Padilla on an email to Patrick June 14, 2024: the authentication IDs the veteran and hence no ID needs to be passed in to the API to get data. c. @carlosfelix2 - Looks like the browser based chat uses the same VA authentication from a quick try on the public website. d. @carlosfelix2 - Per the Health Chat training doc: To use VA Health Chat, the user must be enrolled in VA health care in a location that supports VA Health Chat and have Login.gov, ID.me, DS Logon Level 2 (Premium), or My HealtheVet Premium account credentials. There is no mention of LOA1 or LOA3.
5. Is there an existing vets-api service for Health Chat: a. @carlosfelix2 - NO! A search of the baseline only shows web chat is available.
6. Can we get sample response(s) for the VA Health Chat/CirrusMD API?

POC: Hugo Padilla who is best reached on Teams or via email. Copy Patrick on comms.

[carlosfelix2]

Met with the Health Chat/Cirrus MD team on July 12, 2024. View the Zoom recording - Passcode: a#qs7vgC

Attendees:

• Brody Westcot - VP Cirrus MD
• Ean Hibian - PM Cirrus MD
• Ray - Lead PM
• Dale - Sub contract lead chat bot dev
• Patrick Bateman
• Carlos Felix

Quick summary:

• There is Health Chat and VA Chatbot. These are two different chats. Currently the chatbot is for pharmacy only, but the long term vision is to have the chatbot is to direct users to the correct Heath Chat channel. Currently in the early stages of development.
• Health Chat is available at all VISNs.
• Health Chat uses a filter to look at the appointments in the last 36 months to know if the user is eligible for chat. Health Chat team to share what this filter is. We should be able to look at the user's appointments and use this same filter recipe to determine eligibility.
• Health Chat presents the user a list of channels and their availability. We are likely to not have access to channel operating hours data, but Health Chat team to share any information on how we can get this. Potentially we just initially point the user to the chat and the existing chat system shows what is available to the user.
• Health Chat team to provide us with more documentation, so we can understand more of the chat, how it works, and its API.

[carlosfelix2]

A video on how ChatBot links to Health Chat. A good video to also look at how Health Chat is presented to the user. https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/957735226/3b9da7b241

[carlosfelix2]

Information on the ChatBot API that provides a list of channels available. Chatbot __ VHC Integration Overview.docx

[carlosfelix2]

Information about how ChatBot determines if a user is eligible for Health Chat. Note there is a lot of internal checks for open times and sites. There is currently no API to get open times. We will have to recreate the site lookups and appointment checks to get similar results, but this is a duplication that may not be worth maintaining. Here is what the Cirrus MD team shared with us:

To know that a Veteran is eligible to navigate to Health chat:

• The CirrusMD API needs a plan type - and pharmacy is the only currently supported plan the API filters for.
• Then the VHC application:
  • maps site IDs for the patient to channels available in their region
  • pulls data from the PRVS service to know if a veteran has received care at their site in the last 36 months
  • checks that the site is currently within its hours of operation
• Then the API sends back the available plan(s) via a URL to the chatbot
• If a Veteran is active on multiple sites, the URL will not correspond to a single plan, rather they will receive a category link with their active sites. This puts the veteran into VHC on the landing page you see in the video, and lets them choose which site to enter into.

[wesrowe]

@carlosfelix2, would the MHV landing page have to do the steps listed above under "Then the VHC application:" to determine whether the user is eligible to use Health Chat? (That does sound very hard to maintain.)

[wesrowe]

Seems like this can close? Some of us met with Octo today and picked the "just a link, always visible" option.