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GAO-18-108R 1 (2017-11-14)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaalhv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAO U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 November 14, 2017 Congressional Committees Department of Defense: Telehealth Use in Fiscal Year 2016 The Department of Defense (DOD) provides health care services to 9.4 million active duty servicemembers and other beneficiaries domestically and overseas through its military hospitals, military service clinics, and a civilian network of providers. In some cases, DOD uses telehealth to help provide these services, defining telehealth as the use of telecommunication and information technologies to provide health assessments, treatments, consultations, and other services across distances. Unlike traditional in-person visits, for example, physicians and other providers of telehealth are in one location while patients are in a different location. As an example of telehealth, DOD physicians located in the United States use two-way video to provide health assessments to servicemembers stationed overseas. In 2015, DOD developed a plan to expand the use of telehealth across the Army, Navy, Air Force, and in the National Capital Region and has begun implementing parts of this plan.1 According to DOD, this expansion is intended to help ensure the health of servicemembers by providing access to care for a wider range of conditions and at duty locations and in areas where servicemembers may be injured. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 includes a provision for us to examine several issues related to DOD's delivery of health care, such as access to care.2 In this report, we describe DOD's use of telehealth for active duty servicemembers and other beneficiaries.3 To describe DOD's use of telehealth for active duty servicemembers and other beneficiaries, we reviewed DOD telehealth data for fiscal year 2016.4 Specifically, we reviewed DOD data on the volume of telehealth encounters by the category of telehealth encounter (e.g., real time), the 1Department of Defense, Military Health System Telehealth Working Group, Military Health System Telehealth Goals, Objectives, and Implementation Plan (December 2015). The National Capital Region comprises the District of Columbia and surrounding counties and cities in the states of Maryland and Virginia. Military treatment facilities located within the National Capital Region provide care to beneficiaries across the three military services. 2pub. L. No. 114-328, § 751,130 Stat. 2000, 2244-2245 (2016). The Act also requires DOD to expand the use of telehealth throughout the Military Health System by June 23, 2018. 3Beneficiaries include active duty personnel and their dependents, medically eligible Reserve and National Guard personnel and their dependents, and retirees and their dependents and survivors. 4Fiscal year 2016 data are the most recently available DOD telehealth data. DOD's telehealth data are located in the Military Health System Mart, which is a subset of the Military Health System Data Repository (MDR). MDR is a centralized data repository that receives and archives data from DOD's military hospitals and clinics and from DOD's civilian network of providers. GAO-1 8-108R DOD Telehealth Page 1

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