In this guide

↓ A new vision for VA health care sites

↓ Using the CMS to support Veteran-centered content

A new vision for VA health care sites

Veteran-centered content focuses on tasks and services. 

We know that Veterans and their families or caretakers go to VAMC sites to take specific action, such as to find parking information, make an appointment, or learn if a facility provides the health service they need. That’s why VA conducted research with Veterans and their families to understand what tasks and services are important to them. The new design puts Veterans at the center by organizing information in a way that matches how they think about their health care.

What this looks like

• Top tasks such as “Make an appointment,” “Register for care,” and key services like pharmacy are foregrounded as big blue buttons on service and location pages.

The CMS puts information where Veterans expect to find it.

Veterans and their families often aren’t familiar with the organizational structure behind health care systems, which can make navigating care confusing. The new approach to structuring VA health care content moves away from providing information organized by department. Instead, people can find the information they need at each step of their patient journey. 

What this looks like
You may be used to putting all the information about cardiac care on a cardiology department page. The new approach is different. Instead, you’ll input some information about cardiology in one form in the CMS, which then “feeds” it to several different pages where the information will be relevant to Veterans, such as on pages for individual facilities that offer information about cardiac care, as well as the Health Services page. 

Sharing a common language improves patient experience.

In addition to how content is organized and structured, the new design establishes a common language for the various health care services Veterans can get at VA. This means Veterans can find health care services on your site that use names that are standard across all of VA, making it easier to navigate between several systems. 

In the CMS, this common language is called a health services taxonomy, and it is maintained by a special team at the Veterans Health Administration. In addition to standard names, the taxonomy also defines alternative, patient-friendly names for each health service that are more familiar to people who aren’t medical professionals. 

What this looks like 

• You might see some minor shifts in how your VAMC’s services are labeled on your site. For example, your VAMC’s department for Nutrition and food service will be listed using the standard name “Nutrition, food, and dietary.” 
• In addition to a standard health service label such as “Podiatry,” you’ll see a patient friendly name such as “Foot, ankle, and lower extremities.”
• Unless you have the right CMS permissions you work in the health services taxonomy group at VHA, you won’t be able to edit the VHA health service taxonomy names that appear on your site, or the patient-friendly names.

Using the CMS to support Veteran-centered content

When you work in the CMS to create and maintain content, you are making important decisions about what information is most important to Veterans and their families, and the most effective way to get it to them. 

Whether you’re in charge of the web content for your entire VISN, VAMC, or a smaller section of a site, you can find resources to support Veteran-centered content on your VAMC site in one or more of the following areas.

Content writing

Plain language and clear content writing helps Veterans find and understand information more easily on your site. VA has a style guide that provides research-backed principles and style guidance for writing Veteran-centered content. Anyone using the CMS to create or edit content should follow VA content style guidance.

Check out the VA content style guide

Content structure in the CMS 

The CMS is what feeds content to your VAMC site, but it also facilitates decisions you make about your content. Understanding how content is structured and managed in the CMS will ensure you can keep content clear, consistent, and up to date for Veterans. You can learn more about using the CMS to manage VAMC sites in CMS help guides.