What We Heard at IDGA’s Veterans Healthcare Summit

eVisit attended this year’s Veteran’s Healthcare Summit, where sessions covered the fast-moving state of AI adoption, EHR modernization, and organizational change across VA and DoD/DHA.

A few themes stood out.

AI Adoption Is Moving From Pilot to Infrastructure

VA’s ambient AI scribe rollout scaled from a 10-site pilot to nationwide deployment in months. Clinicians are saving 15 minutes to two hours a day on documentation, and Veteran satisfaction climbed from 92% to 95% at the pilot sites.

The bigger signal was framing, not just results. Ambient AI is being described as an “EHR agnostic shock absorber,” a layer that keeps documentation effort flat while the EHR underneath a clinician changes. That is the same job virtual care integrations need to do during VA’s Oracle Health transition: travel with the clinician, patient, and the encounter, not get rebuilt every time the system of record shifts.

EHR Modernization Is Entering a New Phase

DHA and VA leaders pointed to a “pay it forward” model, placing clinicians from earlier EHR go-lives on-site at new ones, as a key driver of smoother rollouts. New EHR functionality is projected to need a 30% staffing increase for pharmacy alone, with no funded path to get there yet. New capability without new headcount is a familiar constraint, and it is exactly the gap virtual care and access-expansion tools exist to close.

VA’s Reorganization Is the Largest in 30 Years

VA detailed its consolidation from 18 VISNs to 5, each with a dedicated Health Service Area focused on care delivery. VISN directors now report directly to the Under Secretary for Health, and a new Veterans Community Care Group will run utilization management like a payer.

Veteran Healthcare Education Has a Persistent Gap

None of VA’s 190 medical school affiliation agreements currently require a Veteran-specific curriculum, despite VA training more residents annually than the entire national NRMP match. Most civilian clinicians are not ignorant about Veteran care, just untrained: as more Veterans receive care in the community under the MISSION Act and PACT Act, civilian offices routinely miss dual-eligibility status, presumptive exposure conditions, and the basic step of asking whether a visit is service-connected.

Proposed fixes ranged from standardized curricula to routing care information back to a Veteran’s VA primary care manager. Until VA, DoD, and community care share a truly integrated record, the burden of coordinating that care falls on the Veteran.

The Through Line

Different sessions, one pattern. VA and DHA are investing in AI, interoperability, and organizational change to give clinicians time back and close gaps that currently fall on Veterans to manage themselves. That is the same mission eVisit supports: a virtual care capability built for the federal environment, interoperable with the EHR rather than working around it, and designed so care coordination is built around the Veteran’s needs.

Want to talk through what any of this means for your program? Reach out to our federal team.