Serving Those Who Served: How Video Visits Are Changing Veteran Care

For a lot of veterans, "going to the doctor" has never been simple. It might mean a two-hour drive to the nearest VA facility. It might mean taking a full day off work, arranging a ride, or pushing through the kind of mobility issues that make travel exhausting. For veterans managing PTSD, anxiety, or other invisible conditions, it can also mean avoiding care altogether because walking into a crowded waiting room feels like its own kind of ordeal.

Video visits were built to remove exactly those barriers. And when you pair them with remote patient monitoring, you get something even more powerful: care that reaches veterans where they actually are, not just when they can make it into a clinic.

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Why Video Care Matters So Much for Veterans

The VA has leaned hard into virtual care over the last two decades, and the numbers show why. In 2025 alone, more than 2.1 million veterans took part in over 7.7 million episodes of VA telehealth care, a 12% jump from the year before. That's not a niche program anymore. That's how a huge share of veterans are choosing to get care.

Rural veterans benefit especially. Many live hours from the nearest VA medical center, and for someone managing a chronic condition, a mobility limitation, or a demanding work schedule, that distance can be the difference between staying on top of their health and falling behind on it. Video visits close that gap without asking veterans to sacrifice a day of their life for a 15-minute check-in.

The mental health impact is worth sitting with, too. Research following more than 16,000 recently separated veterans found that as the share of mental health visits conducted virtually went up, suicide-related events in that same population went down. Virtual care didn't replace in-person support. It made reaching out easier, faster, and less intimidating, especially for veterans who might otherwise let weeks slip by between appointments.

Where Remote Monitoring Comes In

Video visits solve the "getting seen" problem. Remote Patient Monitoring solves the "staying seen" problem: the gap between appointments where a lot of preventable emergencies quietly take shape.

Veterans managing chronic conditions like hypertension, diabetes, heart failure, or COPD are a natural fit for RPM. VA data backs this up clearly: veterans enrolled in RPM programs have seen hospital admissions drop by 41%, and when admission does happen, hospital stays run roughly 70% shorter. That's not a small efficiency gain. That's veterans avoiding the kind of health crisis that used to be routine.

Here's how the two work together in practice:

• Connected devices (blood pressure cuffs, glucose monitors, pulse oximeters, and scales) quietly track a veteran's vitals at home, day to day.
• A clinical team reviews the data, flags concerning trends, and reaches out before a small issue becomes a big one.
• Video visits handle the moments that need a human conversation, such as a provider walking through a concerning trend, a therapy session, a medication adjustment, or simply a check-in that doesn't require an in-person exam.
• Caregivers and family can join video visits, too, which matters enormously for veterans who rely on a spouse, adult child, or fellow veteran to help manage their care. The VA's own Video Connect platform allows a veteran to invite family members into a session, so the people supporting day-to-day care aren't left out of the conversation. Together, monitoring and video create a loop: data flags what's changing, and video closes the loop with a real conversation, without either side needing to get in a car.

What This Looks Like on the Ground

Think about a veteran managing heart failure who lives 90 minutes from the nearest VA facility. Instead of driving in every time something feels slightly off, their care team is already watching daily readings for early warning signs: weight gain, blood pressure spikes, irregular patterns. When something shifts, a video visit happens that same week, sometimes that same day, without anyone needing to leave home.

Or a veteran managing PTSD who's been putting off therapy because the idea of sitting in a VA waiting room is its own source of stress. A video appointment from their own living room removes that barrier entirely, and the data on virtual mental health access suggests that removing it saves more than time.

This is the shift happening across veteran care broadly: less care built around forcing people into a facility, more care built around meeting people where they are, with the same clinical rigor.

How KaiCare Approaches This

At KaiCare, our RPM, CCM, RTM, and PCM programs are built around that same principle: proactive, continuous care that doesn't depend on a patient making it into an office. Connected devices capture the day-to-day picture, our clinical team monitors it and triages what needs attention, and video visits give patients and providers a way to close the loop face-to-face when it counts.

For veterans in particular, that combination matters. It means fewer unnecessary trips, faster response when something changes, and a care team that's paying attention between visits, not just during them. It also means caregivers and family members can stay looped into care the same way the VA's own video tools already support.

Care shouldn't depend on how far someone has to drive to get it. For the people who served, that matters more than most.

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KaiCare specializes in Remote Patient Monitoring, Chronic Care Management, and connected virtual care that helps patients, including veterans and the providers who serve them, stay supported between visits. Reach out to learn how we can support your care program.