VA launches pilot to empower PCPs to treat chronic conditions

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will employ a unique model of healthcare education and delivery as it attempts to connect local primary care providers (PCPs) of remotely located veterans with specialists located primarily on academic medical center campuses.

The VA initiative, Specialty Care Access Network-Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (SCAN-ECHO), is the first manifestation of Project ECHO, a care delivery model developed by Sanjeev Arora, MD, a liver disease specialist at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, intended to expand the healthcare system’s ability to treat patients with complex chronic conditions.

“Project ECHO is helping us to more fully harness the knowledge and expertise of our specialist physicians and extend that knowledge and expertise out into the field,” said VA Undersecretary for Health Robert A. Petzel, MD, in a statement from the Princeton, N.J.-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which provided funding for Project ECHO with a five-year grant.

Unlike traditional telehealth, the ECHO method virtually connects PCPs with specialists, rather than patients with specialists, providing the providers with the skills and knowledge necessary to treat chronic conditions where access to specialists is not readily available.

“This model empowers our primary care doctors, nurses and other clinicians, and it strengthens VA’s ability to serve our nation’s veterans,” Petzel said in the July 11 statement.