Schedule/Manage Appointments for New Disability Claims

[SullySES]

⚠️ Please read before submitting: As this is a public forum, please do not include any sensitive information (such as your VA API OAuth Client ID, VA API OAuth Client Secret, VA API key, Name, Address, Phone Number, Social Security Number, Medical Record Number, etc).

APIs affected (if applicable)

Health
Benefits Intake
Benefits Claims

Explanation

I am working on an application based on the Benefits Intake API. Here is a high-level overview of some features that would be helpful. All of these assume the Veteran has authorized my app to access their PII.

*If a Veteran is submitting a new disability claim, I want to add features to let them request and schedule a a disability exam with a VA provider at a location of their choosing as part of claim submission.
*I'd like to send a notification to the Benefits Claims API when a disability exam appointment is Scheduled, Changed, or Cancelled
*I'd like to subscribe to an event notification when an exam appointment is confirmed
*I'd like to submit a request to change an existing appointment
*I'd like to subscribe to an event notification when my DBQ has been sent to VBMS
*I'd like to subscribe to an event notification if more documents/evidence is required

Value provided by feature

These features will provide an underlying framework that will allow Veterans/VSOs to have more control over their benefits & have common interactions across VBA/VHA. This will also provide additional capabilities that can be integrated into VSO software.

Acceptance criteria

If the following capabilities are available on the platform (assume transaction/request IDs will be provided on req/resp payloads).

Health API

*Submit a facility & date range, receive a list of available appointment slots for all PCPs, with a slotID on the response payload
*Submit an appointment request, evssID, and SlotID, receive an appointmentID & status
*Submit an appointmentID, receive current status
*Submit evssID, receive status of DBQ
*Submit evssID as optional parameter on any transaction

Benefits API

*Submit an appointmentID, appointment status & claim tracking number/ID, receive confirmation
*Submit evssID, receive status/sub-status that additional information is required from the VA & unique ID of the correspondence (i.e. CorrespondenceID)
*Submit a "CorrespondenceID" and receive PDF of the VBA-generated letter requesting information
*Submit documents with evssID and CorrespondenceID as metadata, receive upload confirmation

[ryanlink]

@SullySES Thanks for submitting these feature requests. Copying them to an internal repo for the Benefits Intake team to review.

[ryanlink]

@SullySES Would you mind sending an email to [email protected] with your contact info? Please reference the URL of this issue.

The new v1 of the Claims endpoint should allow you to do the following (h/t @bastosmichael) - see https://developer.va.gov/explore/benefits/docs/claims:

1. Submit an appointmentID, appointment status & claim tracking number/ID, receive confirmation

• We accept both an EVSS ID and or token generated by the auto-establishment process and you will receive a confirmation. If there are additional ID types that you'd like us to support, we can discuss those.

2. Submit evssID, receive status/sub-status that additional information is required from the VA & unique ID of the correspondence (i.e. CorrespondenceID)

• Similar situation, you just need an EVSS ID and you can pull the status of the claim. We also have a special token for claims submitted through our 526 end point.

3. Submit a "CorrespondenceID" and receive PDF of the VBA-generated letter requesting information

• Would love more information on this correspondence ID. Sounds like something we could implement. Do you need the PDF, or would a JSON response serve as enough information for you to do something with it?

4. Submit documents with evssID and CorrespondenceID as metadata, receive upload confirmation

• We currently only submit documents for submitted 526 forms that have been auto-established through our system, but we've discussed the idea of adding similar functionality for claims as a whole.

We are awaiting word from folks on the Health side about the other features you requested.

[SullySES]

Thanks! For the correspondence questions - basically im trying to make a call to the API with a claim ID and see if there has been any VA-generated correspondence about the claim. If true, i'd like to run some additional processes such as querying the PDF of the correspondence and display it within the application for the claimaint to view. Additionally, I would like to give the end-user the opportunity to respond to the correspondence directly within the app (such as photographing a marriage license) and submit directly back to the intake API as a new document. I am assuming the VA would want to track the metadata internally so you know a claimaint has responded to correspondence with the requested evidence, so the next step in the process may begin.