VA’s Innovative SCOUTS Program Addresses Need at Two Levels
- AUSN Staff
- Mar 19
- 3 min read
VA’s Innovative SCOUTS Program Addresses Need at Two Levels
Older and medically complex veterans often seek acute care because of unmet health or social needs, recurrent falls or functional decline. Lack of access to time-sensitive follow-up to discover and address these needs leads to repeat emergency department visits, hospitalizations, falls and further functional decline.
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ SCOUTS (Supporting Community Outpatient, Urgent Care & Telehealth Services) program uses Intermediate Care Technicians (ICTs) to support acute care and care transitions by ensuring unmet care needs, geriatric syndromes, social determinants of health, and digital divide concerns are identified and addressed during a follow-up home visit conducted in a 48- to 72-hour timeframe.
Since inception in May 2021 through December 3, 2024, 3,219 SCOUT follow-ups were conducted in service of 3,080 veterans. During those visits, data shows:
In one out of 12 situations, home accessibility was not adequate to accommodate functional status.
1,169 social determinants of health (SODH) were addressed.
1,207 pieces of durable medical equipment were provided.
As a result of the assistance provided, 95% or more of the recipients acknowledged that SCOUTS reinforced their likelihood of choosing Veterans Affairs (VA) for future care and increased their knowledge of available VA services.
Most importantly, match-controlled evaluations determined that the program significantly decreased admission rates, reported Dr. Colleen McQuown, Senior Innovation Fellow and SCOUTS Medical Director with VA’s Office of Primary Care. Providers in the emergency department are comfortable discharging patients home because they know those individuals will have rapid follow-up visits that will increase connections to needed VA services and provide mobility and home safety equipment to keep the patients safe.
“It's more than just a home visit,” stated Dr. McQuown. “While the ICT is in the home, they facilitate a video visit with a VA acute care provider.” This contact enables the provider to not only recheck the acute issue, but to address unmet social and health care needs identified by the ICT, answer patient questions and serve as a bridge to connect the patient back to that individual’s primary care team.
The Intermediate Care Technicians conducting the home visits represent another SCOUTS program innovation. Serving as unlicensed assisted personnel with experience as military medics and corpsmen hospital technicians, many ICTs have transitioned from the military or are currently serving as reservists or in the National Guard. The SCOUTS program enables this latter service group to obtain meaningful work with veterans while maintaining their medical skills between their deployments.
SCOUTS programs are in 10 VA sites, and four or five new ones are expected to be operational within the next few months. Overwhelmingly, the veterans who need this care live in areas with no equivalent services, and the plan is to expand the program throughout the VA. Another goal is to provide more opportunities for qualified current and former service members to find jobs and, as reservists, to maintain readiness within the VA as Intermediate Care Technicians. For SCOUTS or ICT inquiries visit the SCOUTS Diffusion Marketplace Page and the ICT Diffusion Marketplace Page or email VHA11PCPrimaryCareAction@va.gov.
