Photo: ©iStock/SeventyFour

(09/04/2025) More than 90% of rural health care professionals reported that VA’s Video-conference Antimicrobial Stewardship Team (VAST) improved Veteran Care quality.  VAST connects rural medical centers with infectious disease experts to improve antibiotic use for Veterans.  Additionally, all the interviewees recognized the program as meeting a critical need and facilitating collaboration for rural settings. Researchers from a VA national research team also reviewed more than 600 telehealth consultations for 500 Veterans from September 2021 to February 2024 in a range of cases from pneumonia to urinary tract infections.  They found antimicrobial stewardship was a resource-intensive process requiring an infectious disease-trained physician, clinical pharmacists, microbiologists, information system specialists, infection preventionists, and hospital epidemiologists who are often beyond what rural hospitals have to offer. By offering VAST’s expertise to rural hospitals via VA’s robust videoconferencing network, Veterans can receive high quality care wherever they live. (Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Aug. 11, 2025)