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Tom AllinChief Veterans Experience OfficerOffice of Veterans Experience
FY 16-17: Agency Priority Goal
Improve Veterans Experience with VA
Priority Goal
Goal Overview
VA offers a remarkable array of services and benefits to Veterans and eligible dependents. But the experience is disjointed and inconsistent. There are hundreds of phone numbers and thousands of websites, each operating independently under different standards. Similarly, there are a wide array of VA and non-VA resources at the Federal, state, local, corporate, non-profit and tribal level that are not coherently organized or coordinated into a single source or reference point for the Veteran. Veterans deserve better and so do VA staff, who care deeply about delivering the best possible outcome for Veterans.
The Veterans Experience team is leading a powerful new effort to improve customer experiences across VA, nationwide. Our goal: Fostering the delivery of effective and easy customer experiences in which Veterans feel valued. We are achieving this goal the same way the world’s most successful companies do: by listening to our customers – Veterans, their families and supporters – when they describe how they want things to work. Equally important, we are listening to our employees about obstacles to excellence on-the-job. Employee empowerment is an essential part of the equation. This is user-centered design. It puts Veterans and the employees who serve them front and center.
VA and the Veterans Experience team face a number of challenges and barriers:
- Siloed products and services without a common view of customers and their needs and wants.
- Customer touchpoints and experiences owned by individual product and service teams, not integrated within a complementary suite of offerings.
- Insular approach that does not account for the community resources used by customers.
The APG will track our ability to overcome these barriers by implementing the strategies described in the next section.
To build trust among our customers, VA must consistently deliver customer experiences marked by effectiveness, ease, and engagement.[1] To ensure comparability across VA’s disparate service and product lines, the same measures of Trust and Customer Experience will be applied.
Trust
VA earns trust among Veterans by knowing them and showing that we care; by understanding and anticipating their needs; by providing fair benefits and timely services; by being there when they need us; and by keeping our promises. With every interaction, VA has the opportunity to deepen a trusting relationship with Veterans, or to diminish that trust.
Our Agency Priority Goal states: By September 30, 2017, VA will reach 90% agreement with the statement “I trust VA to fulfill our country’s commitment to Veterans.”
Timeline:
Q1 FY16: Trust and Experience measures incorporated into existing customer experience surveys
Q2 FY16: Baseline data collection begins
Q3 FY16: Baseline measurement established; quarterly targets specified
Q4 FY 2016: Publish quarterly update
Q1 FY 2017: 70 percent of VA customers surveyed ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with Trust statement Customer Experience
Q2 FY 2017: 75 percent of VA customers surveyed ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with Trust statement Customer Experience
Q3 FY 2017: 80 percent of VA customers surveyed ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with Trust statement Customer Experience
Q4 FY17: 90% of VA customers surveyed ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with Trust statement
Customer Experience
Trust in VA is built one interaction at a time. The experience must be effective; it must be easy; and, ideally, it must be engaging and reflective of a valued, personal relationship with our customer. Trust is broken when VA does not consistently meet expectations in these three categories. VA will use customers’ ratings of their individual experiences as indicators of performance toward the overall Veterans Experience APG.
The measures will include level of agreement with questions such as:
- Effectiveness: “I got the service I needed.”
- Ease: “It was easy to get the service I needed.”
- Engagement: “I felt like a valued customer.”
These measures are also new, and will be implemented along the timeline for the Trust measure indicated above. They will be added to new and existing VA customer experience surveys where responses will be correlated with operational data to highlight performance improvement opportunities that will improve Veterans experiences.
[1] Adopted from the Forrester Research customer experience framework.
Strategies
To create experiences that meet the needs and expectations of our customers, the Veterans Experience team will partner across VA to:
- Unify customer experiences across VA products and services based on an understanding of customers’ needs and the role that VA plays in their lives.
- Establish a coherent, enterprise-wide framework for measuring and reporting customers’ experiences with VA.
- Join and contribute to a coordinated, holistic network of resources inside and outside VA who enable the health and well-being of Veterans.
VA’s strategy centers on three initiatives:
- Better serving customers
- Making improvements based on customer feedback
- Engaging the community
1. Support a national network of MyVA Communities that integrate VA with the broader set of public and private resources available to Veterans in their communities, ensuring Veterans get the support they need and have a forum for their voices to be heard.
2. Integrate existing customer-facing websites into a single digital platform where VA’s current and potential customers will be able to easily access the information they need to obtain the benefits and services they have earned and take care of their own “self-service” transactions for those benefits and services.
3. Integrate common customer data across departmental systems to enable simplified transactions and proactive, tailored outreach to Veterans in the context of a lifelong relationship with VA.
4. Design and implement a coherent, department-wide framework for measuring customer experience with VA to assess the efficacy of departmental products, services, and initiatives. By understanding the our customers experience via the MyVA communities, consolidated call centers, and integrated customer data, VA will be better positioned to understand the entire customer experience from start to finish. This holistic insight will enable the development of performance improvement initiatives aimed at improving the customer experiences.
Finally, the Veterans Experience team acknowledges that community members help VA deliver great customer experiences. Veterans Experience seeks to enable the following outcomes for them via MyVA Communities:
- Connect Veterans with existing benefits and services available in the local community.
- Make it easy for Veterans to engage with VA and local community groups.
- Facilitate an open, healthy dialogue on Veterans’ needs.
[1] See also VA’s Employee Engagement Agency Priority Goal, which includes a range of initiatives complementary to those related specifically to customer service.
Progress Update
During the fourth quarter 2016, the Office of Veterans Experience (VE) continued to make progress in multiple areas – performance measurement, MyVA Communities, Vets.gov, the VA Contact Centers, and the District Veterans Experience Offices.
Performance Measurement:
VA met its fourth quarter goal by collecting survey data from customers who used VA services between April 2016 – June 2016. The Q4 VE survey questions were:
o “I trust VA to fulfill our country’s commitment with Veterans,”
o “I got the care or service I needed,”
o “It was easy to get the care or service I needed,” and
o “I felt like a valued customer.”
We also asked customers an open-ended question on how VA can improve their experience. Customer responses to this survey indicate that trust in VA increased to 59 percent. This direct customer feedback now allows VA to understand the Veterans’ experience as a necessary step to prioritizing experience improvements.
MyVA Communities:
VE is still on track to reaching the next milestone of 100 MyVA Communities by December 31, 2016. In addition, we successfully met our goal of establishing a network of MyVA communities through our first E-summit which occurred on September 9, 2016. This summit included 1,026 registered viewers, addressed over 100 stakeholder questions, and received 34 social media impressions about the event.
Vets.gov:
In Q4 the VETs.gov team was able to complete two critical milestones:
• Completed the vets.gov account proof of concept
• Migrated 50 percent of content and services to vets.gov
Background: Vets.gov will be the single VA website where Veterans will go to discover, apply for, track, and manage the VA benefits and services they have earned. The initial beta release of Vets.gov was successfully launched on Veterans Day, November 11, 2015 in the Amazon cloud and has a full-VA Authority to Operate. This is a first step toward the end-state vision. The Vets.gov team is “developing in the open” to ensure that Veteran feedback drives the design, feature development, and rollout of Vets.gov. Veteran research sessions are conducted every week with Veterans, and the Vets.gov team is constantly updating the design and adding functionality to the site. Moreover, Vets.gov is not just a website; rather it is a cloud-based platform that enables VA to deliver the highest performing, integrated services more quickly and cost effectively. Vets.gov has already delivered immediate benefits to Veterans and their families, including:
• Online health care application for Veterans to apply for VA health care; approximately 500 Veterans now apply for health care online daily (compared to 62 per day previously), totaling 67,259 online applications submitted since July 2016
• GI Bill® Comparison Tool: Veterans can use VA’s GI Bill® Comparison Tool to make the most of their GI Bill Benefits
• Facility Locator: Find VA facilities throughout the U.S. and its territories.
• Veterans Employment Center: Connects Veterans and their families with meaningful employment and career development opportunities.
• Mobile-responsive
• 100 percent 508 compliant
• More than 250 content pages for disability and education benefits have been rewritten in Plain Language
• User feedback mechanism on Vets.gov “feedback forum”
531 Veteran facing, VA.gov websites have been reviewed and analyzed for migration.
70 percent of in-scope websites have been migrated, or are currently in process of being migrated.
Customer Data Integration (Veteran 360):
While Vets.gov is a Veteran’s “single view of VA,”, customer data management (formerly CDI) is the ”single view of the Veteran.” Customer data management will improve Veterans’ experience by providing a single, authoritative view of the Veterans information, information they provide to VA, and their information within VA. Examples of customer data management will improve Veterans digital experience, including that a Veteran will be able to easily associate their verified military status to activities such as their Linkedin profile.
Call Center:
Technology modernization efforts are on target
o Completed design of call flows and scripts for the enterprise and downstream IVR systems.
o Completed development of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and testing is in progress.
o MyVA311 Knowledge Management content is under development.
District Veterans Experience Offices:
VA’s VE has hired four of the five District Veterans Experience Officers (DVEOs). Final selections on the remaining two DVEO positions are underway. The five District Offices designed to support DVEOs are in the process of staffing and standing up field operations. Both the North Atlantic and the South East Districts are fully staffed. The remaining three Districts are actively recruiting and are currently staffed at approximately 50 percent. District staff across the country have already begun to work with local facilities in effort to improve the Veteran Experience and increase Veteran trust.
Next Steps
Performance Measurement:
VA is on target to meet its Q1 FY 2017 goal for reporting VE APG measures for the period July-September 2016.
MyVA Communities:
VE will further improve the Veterans Experience by actively engaging in MyVA Communities and the community Veterans engagement boards (CVEBs). VE support will be ongoing and the local District VE teams will be engaged in planning, implementing, and monitoring local community efforts in all quarters throughout FY 2017. The role of the teams in local communities is to be the conduit to building trusted relationships between VA and local stakeholders, create a CVEB network across the districts (district-level summits), and share best practices, knowledge, and lessons learned with other CVEBs. The teams will also spark interest in other communities without a coordinated support system of resources, compare/correlate Veteran data with CVEB activities, and provide support and customizable tools to the CVEBs and local VA facility leaders who participate with the boards. The team will continue to work towards establishing 100 MyVA communities by December 31, 2016.
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Performance Indicators
Trust in VA among America’s Veterans
Customer experiences with VA that are viewed positively by Veterans
Contributing Programs & Other Factors
[Section left blank intentionally, continues to be developed]
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Strategic Goals
Strategic Goal:
Empower Veterans to Improve Their Well-being
Statement:
Empower Veterans to Improve Their Well-being
Strategic Objectives
Statement:
Improve Veteran Wellness and Economic Security
Description:
Summary:
Numerous programs provide a broad spectrum of benefits and support services that assist Veterans and eligible beneficiaries. To enable Veterans and eligible beneficiaries to choose the best benefits and services for their needs, VA will improve coordination between our programs, leverage supportive interactions between programs, and reduce overlap across programs. Success will be measured by the differences made in the lives of the Veterans we serve, including decreasing Veteran unemployment, decreasing home foreclosures, decreasing homelessness, reducing processing times for disability compensation claims, increasing preventive care and healthy lifestyle changes, and increasing access to and utilization of virtual care modalities.
Strategies:
VA will eliminate Veteran homelessness by the end of FY 2015. VA, in collaboration with its Federal partners, will continue to provide rehabilitation services for homeless and at-risk Veterans, including employment assistance, access to permanent and transitional housing, and other supportive services. As the number of homeless Veterans continues to decline, the focus will shift from rescue to prevention.
VA will improve Veteran career readiness to reduce Veteran unemployment. We will synchronize and align Veteran employment programs managed by VA, and improve coordination across the various Federal Veteran employment initiatives. We will increase support to our Veterans with disabilities and those who are GI Bill eligible through programs offering educational and vocational counseling. VA will increase support to Veteran entrepreneurs through public-private partnerships to provide capacity building and by providing access to Federal contracting opportunities.
VA will provide Veterans and eligible beneficiaries with personalized, proactive, patient-driven health care to optimize health and well-being, while providing state-of-the-art disease management. VA’s Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT) will ensure patient engagement in self-care, preventive services, primary care, and mental health services. PACT is a partnership between the Veteran and the health care team with an emphasis on prevention, health promotion, and self-management. PACTs use a team-based approach, with various members of the team stepping in at different points in time to provide needed care. We will expand and refine, in coordination with DoD, research into the long-term consequences of TBI and PTSD. VA will increasingly seek to understand underlying health, injury and disorder mechanisms to create evidence-based diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation methods for Veterans and eligible beneficiaries with support from their families.
Statement:
Increase Customer Satisfaction through Improvements in Benefits and Services Delivery Policies, Procedures, and Interfaces
Description:
Summary:
VA is a customer service organization. Complicated application processes, long processing timelines or difficulties getting information and appointments all impact the client’s experience and satisfaction. Veterans and eligible beneficiaries deserve a support system that is responsive to their needs. VA must keep pace with Veterans’ expectations and transform its customer services – soliciting regular customer feedback, streamlining processes, and delivering consistent service across customer-preferred channels.
We live in a connected world. The rapid pace of technological advancement is reshaping Veterans’ expectations regarding how services, benefits, and support should be delivered. Today’s client expects instant access to information and self-service options via the Internet, and increasingly through mobile devices like tablets and smartphones (and the next generation “smart” devices that are yet to be deployed).
To provide a personalized experience, we must listen, learn, and understand the needs and expectations of those we serve. We must have the knowledge, information and insight to understand why some choose not to fully engage with VA.
Strategies:
VA will provide timely, accurate decisions on Veterans’ disability claims and eliminate the claims backlog. We will then implement a robust plan, and revisit procedures to ensure claims are addressed in no more than 125 days with at least 98 percent accuracy. The plan includes redesigning policies and procedures, continuing to enhance training for claims processors, and utilizing the most advanced IT. We will also increase the use of video teleconference hearings to address claims appeals.
VA will continue to expand implementation of PACT to improve partnerships with Veterans and eligible beneficiaries, increase team-based care coordination and management, and expand access to care. VA will improve patient-facing and clinician-facing e-health systems by expanding the development and use of health-related virtual modalities. These modalities include telehealth[1], E-Consult[2], secure messaging, MyHealtheVet, and mobile applications.
VA will enhance client satisfaction by capturing client data once, sharing it enterprise-wide, and using this client data for a lifetime, which will promote more efficient use of data across business lines. We will identify sources of consistent, reliable, and authoritative Veteran data. We will establish architecture, business rules, roles and responsibilities, and governance to enable VA lines of business to use the authoritative common client data to improve delivery of benefits and services to Veterans. VA will gain access to additional external data, knowledge, and experiences so we can broaden our understanding of our client’s needs and expectations. We will enable secure, privacy-protected electronic exchange of personal, health, and economic data on Veterans from induction oath through the final survivor benefit.
VA will rethink its operations as a Department, defining the fundamental crosscutting capabilities and interdependencies required to perform them. We will identify and address any internal organizational, policy, procedural, perceptual, and cultural boundaries that constrain our ability to coordinate, integrate, and deliver benefits and services.
VA will streamline its virtual presence (Web sites, portals and call centers), reducing duplication and enhancing personalization to enable clients to get the information they need, on their schedule.
VA will increase access to burial benefits in national cemeteries through its plans to construct five new national cemeteries and by recognizing and addressing the unique needs of Veterans and eligible beneficiaries who reside in densely populated urban areas as well as sparsely populated rural locations. We will ensure that the service and appearance of our national cemeteries meets the highest standards commensurate with these national shrines.
[1] Telehealth uses information and telecommunication technologies to provide health care services in situations in which the patient and practitioner are separated by geographical distance. Telehealth in VA increases access to high quality health care services using Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT), Home Telehealth (HT) and Store and Forward Telehealth (SFT).
[2] E-Consult is an approach to provide clinical support from provider to provider. Through a formal consult request, processed and documented in the Computerized Patient Record System, a provider requests a specialist to address a clinical problem or to answer a clinical question for a specific patient. Utilizing information provided in the consult request and/or review of the patient’s electronic medical record, the consultant provides a documented response that addresses the request without a face-to-face visit.
Agency Priority Goals
Statement:
|
Improve client and stakeholder awareness of, and access to, Veterans benefits and health care services. By September 30, 2015, VA will increase the use of virtual service options by increasing the percent of claims received electronically, by increasing the number of accredited Veterans service officers registered on the Stakeholder Enterprise Portal, by increasing the number of registered eBenefits users, and by increasing the percent of patients who access VA health care using a virtual format such as video telehealth or online services.
Indicators:
|
Description:
VA’s focus in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 is to deliver seamless and integrated services while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of virtual access. To achieve the best possible outcomes for Veterans, Servicemembers, and eligible beneficiaries, VA will improve access to, and encourage the use of, its virtual benefits and services. VA and Department of Defense (DoD) have established a jointly supported portal known as eBenefits, which allows Veterans, Servicemembers, and other eligible beneficiaries to access and submit information when, where, and how they want.
The development and proliferation of virtual access to care supports an organizational approach that is personalized, proactive, and patient-driven. VA virtual health services use technology and health informatics to provide Veterans with better access and more effective care management. Advances in virtual care expand where health care services can be accessed, reduce the need for travel to medical facilities, and transform VA’s delivery of health care and its effect on patients’ health outcomes.
Statement:
|
Improve accuracy and reduce the time it takes to complete disability compensation benefit claims. Eliminate the disability claims backlog and process all claims in 125 days in FY 2015.
Indicators:
* VA is in the midst of reviewing its claims processing accuracy metrics and goals to ensure VA continues to drive decisions of the highest quality. VA plans to engage its VSO partners and other stakeholders as more information becomes available. |
Description:
VA will provide timely, accurate decisions on Veterans’ disability compensation and eliminate the claims backlog in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. Improving quality and reducing the length of time it takes to process disability claims are integral to VA's mission of providing benefits to eligible Veterans in a timely, accurate, and compassionate manner. In FY 2013, VBA began measuring the accuracy of individual issues for each claim (“issue-based accuracy”), as it provides a more detailed measure of workload proficiency. However, VBA will continue to monitor and report out on claim-based accuracy as a key indicator for this Agency Priority Goal. To improve benefits delivery, VA is transitioning to an electronic claims process that will reduce processing time and increase accuracy. As of the end of June 2015, over 94 percent of VBA’s inventory is in an electronic format and is being processed electronically by VBA employees using the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS). All claims are either received electronically or are converted to electronic format for processing.
Statement:
In partnership, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and VA aim to reduce the number of Veterans living on the streets, experiencing homelessness to zero (as measured by the FY 2016 PIT Count).
Indicators:
- Reduction in homeless Veterans living on the streets, experiencing homelessness to zero (as measured by the FY 2016 PIT Count).
- The “Number of Homeless Veterans” on a single night is determined by the PIT Count, which is conducted annually the last week of January each year “The PIT Count reflects the results of the work performed and the fiscal obligation/budget made in the prior fiscal year.”
- Reduction in total homeless Veterans temporarily living in shelters or transitional housing to 12,500 (as measured by the FY 2016 PIT Count).
Description:
VA has taken decisive action toward its goal of ending homelessness among Veterans. The End Veteran Homelessness initiative is intended to prevent Veterans and their families from entering homelessness and to assist those who are homeless in exiting as safely and quickly as possible. VA’s “no wrong door” philosophy will ensure that homeless and at risk for homeless Veterans have timely access to appropriate housing and services. Any door a Veteran comes to - at a medical center, a regional office, or a community organization - will lead to the tools to offer Veteran assistance. Ending homelessness among Veterans will advance the mission of VA by ensuring that all Veterans and their families achieve housing stability.
On a single night in January 2014 during the Point in Time (PIT) Count [1], there were 49,933 homeless Veterans in the US. Effectively ending homelessness among Veterans requires rapid access to permanent housing, health care, employment, benefits, and other supportive services. VA works closely with community partners to meet current and new demands for any Veteran who is experiencing or is at imminent risk of homelessness. Housing First and Rapid Re-housing are two of the many evidence-based approaches VA uses to end homelessness. The Housing First model follows the philosophy of providing permanent housing as quickly as possible to Veterans/individuals experiencing homelessness and then wrapping health care and other supportive services as needed around the Veteran to sustain housing and improve their quality of life. Rapid Re-housing is a set of strategies to help families quickly move out of homelessness and into permanent housing. It typically involves: housing search and landlord mediation assistance, short-term or flexible rental assistance, and transitional case management services. Rapid Re-housing provides crisis intervention services to quickly place an individual or family who is currently homeless into a permanent, sustainable housing situation.
[1] The annual PIT estimates are a snapshot of homelessness. They are submitted to HUD each year by communities and account for homeless Veterans in emergency shelters or transitional housing on the night of the PIT count (i.e., sheltered) as well as homeless Veterans who are in places not meant for human habitation such as the streets, abandoned buildings, cars, or encampments (i.e., unsheltered). Communities typically conduct their PIT count during the last week in January when a large share of the homeless population is expected to seek shelter rather than stay outside. Because counting people in shelters is more precise than conducting street counts, the timing of the PIT count is intended to improve the accuracy of the estimates. (Source: Veteran Homelessness: A Supplemental Report to the FY 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress).
Strategic Objectives
Strategic Objective:
Statement:
Increase Customer Satisfaction through Improvements in Benefits and Services Delivery Policies, Procedures, and Interfaces
Description:
Summary:
VA is a customer service organization. Complicated application processes, long processing timelines or difficulties getting information and appointments all impact the client’s experience and satisfaction. Veterans and eligible beneficiaries deserve a support system that is responsive to their needs. VA must keep pace with Veterans’ expectations and transform its customer services – soliciting regular customer feedback, streamlining processes, and delivering consistent service across customer-preferred channels.
We live in a connected world. The rapid pace of technological advancement is reshaping Veterans’ expectations regarding how services, benefits, and support should be delivered. Today’s client expects instant access to information and self-service options via the Internet, and increasingly through mobile devices like tablets and smartphones (and the next generation “smart” devices that are yet to be deployed).
To provide a personalized experience, we must listen, learn, and understand the needs and expectations of those we serve. We must have the knowledge, information and insight to understand why some choose not to fully engage with VA.
Strategies:
VA will provide timely, accurate decisions on Veterans’ disability claims and eliminate the claims backlog. We will then implement a robust plan, and revisit procedures to ensure claims are addressed in no more than 125 days with at least 98 percent accuracy. The plan includes redesigning policies and procedures, continuing to enhance training for claims processors, and utilizing the most advanced IT. We will also increase the use of video teleconference hearings to address claims appeals.
VA will continue to expand implementation of PACT to improve partnerships with Veterans and eligible beneficiaries, increase team-based care coordination and management, and expand access to care. VA will improve patient-facing and clinician-facing e-health systems by expanding the development and use of health-related virtual modalities. These modalities include telehealth[1], E-Consult[2], secure messaging, MyHealtheVet, and mobile applications.
VA will enhance client satisfaction by capturing client data once, sharing it enterprise-wide, and using this client data for a lifetime, which will promote more efficient use of data across business lines. We will identify sources of consistent, reliable, and authoritative Veteran data. We will establish architecture, business rules, roles and responsibilities, and governance to enable VA lines of business to use the authoritative common client data to improve delivery of benefits and services to Veterans. VA will gain access to additional external data, knowledge, and experiences so we can broaden our understanding of our client’s needs and expectations. We will enable secure, privacy-protected electronic exchange of personal, health, and economic data on Veterans from induction oath through the final survivor benefit.
VA will rethink its operations as a Department, defining the fundamental crosscutting capabilities and interdependencies required to perform them. We will identify and address any internal organizational, policy, procedural, perceptual, and cultural boundaries that constrain our ability to coordinate, integrate, and deliver benefits and services.
VA will streamline its virtual presence (Web sites, portals and call centers), reducing duplication and enhancing personalization to enable clients to get the information they need, on their schedule.
VA will increase access to burial benefits in national cemeteries through its plans to construct five new national cemeteries and by recognizing and addressing the unique needs of Veterans and eligible beneficiaries who reside in densely populated urban areas as well as sparsely populated rural locations. We will ensure that the service and appearance of our national cemeteries meets the highest standards commensurate with these national shrines.
[1] Telehealth uses information and telecommunication technologies to provide health care services in situations in which the patient and practitioner are separated by geographical distance. Telehealth in VA increases access to high quality health care services using Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT), Home Telehealth (HT) and Store and Forward Telehealth (SFT).
[2] E-Consult is an approach to provide clinical support from provider to provider. Through a formal consult request, processed and documented in the Computerized Patient Record System, a provider requests a specialist to address a clinical problem or to answer a clinical question for a specific patient. Utilizing information provided in the consult request and/or review of the patient’s electronic medical record, the consultant provides a documented response that addresses the request without a face-to-face visit.
Agency Priority Goals
Statement: Improve Veterans Experience with VA: Fulfilling our country’s commitment to Veterans, VA will deliver effective and easy customer experiences in which Veterans feel valued. By September 30, 2017, reach 90% agreement with the statement “I trust VA to fulfill our country’s commitment to Veterans.” Because this is a new measure, VA will establish the baseline in FY16 and add the measure to surveys covering all of VA’s primary services and product lines.
Description: VA offers a remarkable array of services and benefits to Veterans and eligible dependents. But the experience is disjointed and inconsistent. There are hundreds of phone numbers and thousands of websites, each operating independently under different standards. Similarly, there are a wide array of VA and non-VA resources at the Federal, state, local, corporate, non-profit and tribal level that are not coherently organized or coordinated into a single source or reference point for the Veteran. Veterans deserve better and so do VA staff, who care deeply about delivering the best possible outcome for Veterans. The Veterans Experience team is leading a powerful new effort to improve customer experiences across VA, nationwide. Our goal: Fostering the delivery of effective and easy customer experiences in which Veterans feel valued. We are achieving this goal the same way the world’s most successful companies do: by listening to our customers – Veterans, their families and supporters – when they describe how they want things to work. Equally important, we are listening to our employees about obstacles to excellence on-the-job. Employee empowerment is an essential part of the equation. This is user-centered design. It puts Veterans and the employees who serve them front and center. VA and the Veterans Experience team face a number of challenges and barriers: The APG will track our ability to overcome these barriers by implementing the strategies described in the next section. To build trust among our customers, VA must consistently deliver customer experiences marked by effectiveness, ease, and engagement.[1] To ensure comparability across VA’s disparate service and product lines, the same measures of Trust and Customer Experience will be applied. Trust VA earns trust among Veterans by knowing them and showing that we care; by understanding and anticipating their needs; by providing fair benefits and timely services; by being there when they need us; and by keeping our promises. With every interaction, VA has the opportunity to deepen a trusting relationship with Veterans, or to diminish that trust. Our Agency Priority Goal states: By September 30, 2017, VA will reach 90% agreement with the statement “I trust VA to fulfill our country’s commitment to Veterans.” Timeline: Q1 FY16: Trust and Experience measures incorporated into existing customer experience surveys Q2 FY16: Baseline data collection begins Q3 FY16: Baseline measurement established; quarterly targets specified Q4 FY 2016: Publish quarterly update Q1 FY 2017: 70 percent of VA customers surveyed ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with Trust statement Customer Experience Q2 FY 2017: 75 percent of VA customers surveyed ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with Trust statement Customer Experience Q3 FY 2017: 80 percent of VA customers surveyed ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with Trust statement Customer Experience Q4 FY17: 90% of VA customers surveyed ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with Trust statement Customer Experience Trust in VA is built one interaction at a time. The experience must be effective; it must be easy; and, ideally, it must be engaging and reflective of a valued, personal relationship with our customer. Trust is broken when VA does not consistently meet expectations in these three categories. VA will use customers’ ratings of their individual experiences as indicators of performance toward the overall Veterans Experience APG. The measures will include level of agreement with questions such as: These measures are also new, and will be implemented along the timeline for the Trust measure indicated above. They will be added to new and existing VA customer experience surveys where responses will be correlated with operational data to highlight performance improvement opportunities that will improve Veterans experiences. [1] Adopted from the Forrester Research customer experience framework.
Statement: Indicators:
Improve client and stakeholder awareness of, and access to, Veterans benefits and health care services. By September 30, 2015, VA will increase the use of virtual service options by increasing the percent of claims received electronically, by increasing the number of accredited Veterans service officers registered on the Stakeholder Enterprise Portal, by increasing the number of registered eBenefits users, and by increasing the percent of patients who access VA health care using a virtual format such as video telehealth or online services.
Description: VA’s focus in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 is to deliver seamless and integrated services while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of virtual access. To achieve the best possible outcomes for Veterans, Servicemembers, and eligible beneficiaries, VA will improve access to, and encourage the use of, its virtual benefits and services. VA and Department of Defense (DoD) have established a jointly supported portal known as eBenefits, which allows Veterans, Servicemembers, and other eligible beneficiaries to access and submit information when, where, and how they want. The development and proliferation of virtual access to care supports an organizational approach that is personalized, proactive, and patient-driven. VA virtual health services use technology and health informatics to provide Veterans with better access and more effective care management. Advances in virtual care expand where health care services can be accessed, reduce the need for travel to medical facilities, and transform VA’s delivery of health care and its effect on patients’ health outcomes.
Statement: Indicators: * VA is in the midst of reviewing its claims processing accuracy metrics and goals to ensure VA continues to drive decisions of the highest quality. VA plans to engage its VSO partners and other stakeholders as more information becomes available.
Improve accuracy and reduce the time it takes to complete disability compensation benefit claims. Eliminate the disability claims backlog and process all claims in 125 days in FY 2015.
Description: VA will provide timely, accurate decisions on Veterans’ disability compensation and eliminate the claims backlog in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. Improving quality and reducing the length of time it takes to process disability claims are integral to VA's mission of providing benefits to eligible Veterans in a timely, accurate, and compassionate manner. In FY 2013, VBA began measuring the accuracy of individual issues for each claim (“issue-based accuracy”), as it provides a more detailed measure of workload proficiency. However, VBA will continue to monitor and report out on claim-based accuracy as a key indicator for this Agency Priority Goal. To improve benefits delivery, VA is transitioning to an electronic claims process that will reduce processing time and increase accuracy. As of the end of June 2015, over 94 percent of VBA’s inventory is in an electronic format and is being processed electronically by VBA employees using the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS). All claims are either received electronically or are converted to electronic format for processing.
