System-wide implementation of telehealth to support military Veterans and their families in response to COVID-19: A paradigm shift

Abstract

The need for the expansion of telehealth services in behavioural health care existed long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, for a variety of reasons – including technological costs, reluctance of behavioural care providers to adapt telehealth to their practices, privacy concerns, and client aversion to receiving care remotely, among many others– telehealth has not been widely implemented. However, the COVID-19 crisis, and the accompanying social isolation that ensued, necessitated either a swift transition to telehealth delivery of behavioural health care, the termination of behavioural health care, or the clinician continuing to meet face-to-face with clients, placing both the clinician and the client at increased risk of infection. Shifting behavioural health care to a telehealth platform seemed the most sensible and, quite candidly, the only option, although many clinics still operate employing the face-to-face modality. In this article, we describe how an emerging national behavioural health care network, Cohen Veterans Network (CVN) in the United States, rapidly and relatively seamlessly transitioned to a full-service, virtual network of outpatient behavioural health clinics when faced with a national crisis.

The differential impact of COVID‐19 on the psychological stress of post‐9/11 veterans: Gender, race, and ethnicity

“…There are non‐governmentalorganizations providingfemale veterans with information, links to resources, and community and social connections. The expansion of veteran‐focused mental health crisis lines and telehealth resources (Krishnamurti et al., 2023)may help reduce the perceived stress of female veterans during the pandemic (Shelton et al., 2020). Respite care, home visiting programs, flexible family leave policies, and support groups may all prove useful for female veterans and their families to reduce stress levels.…”

Applications of Telemedicine in Dermatology

“…Some of the problems one might face with telemedicine will be technical, mainly associated with internet access, Wi-Fi strength, and bandwidth issues [39][40][41]. Hence, occasionally medical practitioners favor voice calls for consultation over videoconferencing modalities as lacked stable connections.…”

Comparison of telehealth and in-person mental health care in military veterans and active-duty service members.

“…For these reasons, telehealth therapy has been proposed as a possible solution to many of these challenges, such as geographic and transportation barriers, privacy, and stigma-related concerns (Chen et al, 2021). Telehealth was in use at Veterans Health Administration (VA; Connolly et al, 2022; Zhang et al, 2022) and Cohen Veterans Network (CVN; Shelton et al, 2020) prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but increased dramatically in response to the pandemic. While research has supported the noninferiority of telehealth for depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in randomized controlled trials (Bellanti et al, 2022), additional research is needed to better understand its effectiveness in real world clinical settings.…”