Modernizing the Front Door to Care: Evaluation of Veterans Administration Health Connect's Impact on Access, Utilization, and Patient Experience

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether centralized appointment scheduling and same-day virtual clinician evaluation improved appointment timeliness and follow-up after nurse triage. We also assessed whether these changes were associated with differences in downstream utilization, costs, reach, and Veteran experience. STUDY SETTING AND DESIGN: Retrospective quasi-experimental evaluation of Veteran Administration Health Connect (VAHC) modernization across 18 regions between October 1, 2018, and September 30, 2024. Staggered rollout enabled difference-in-differences and event-study analyses comparing outcomes before and after modernization. DATA SOURCES AND ANALYTIC SAMPLE: Data were drawn from the Veterans Administration Corporate Data Warehouse, Telecare Record Manager, and Customer Relationship Management platforms, and VSignals Veteran experience surveys. The analytic sample comprised 11,118,916 encounters (4,560,677 pre-modernization; 6,558,239 post-modernization). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Centralized scheduling was associated with modest and mixed improvements in appointment access. Same-day scheduling increased by 14.3 percentage points (95% CI, 10.1 to 18.5). Time from call to scheduled appointment decreased by 0.37 days (95% CI, -0.49 to -0.26), while time to completed appointment increased by 2.9 days (95% CI, 0.2 to 5.7). Following modernization, time from nurse triage to any subsequent care decreased by 0.28 days (95% CI, -0.45 to -0.11), and the proportion of callers receiving no follow-up care within 7 days declined by 2.3 points (95% CI, -4.0 to -0.5). Modernization was not associated with changes in the proportion of all emergency department (ED) visits preceded by a nurse triage call or in total ED visit volume. Seven-day ED visits, admissions, and total costs did not change meaningfully. Veteran satisfaction was high for post-modernization virtual encounters. CONCLUSIONS: VAHC modernization improved appointment access and follow-up after nurse triage but was not associated with short-term changes in ED use or costs, highlighting gains in navigation and experience without immediate shifts in downstream utilization.