Veterans Home Care Services

What is the Department of Veterans’ Affairs?

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) Community Nursing Program provides veterans and war widows (entitled persons) with access to a range of quality health care and related services, including community nursing services.

The program is aimed at providing community nursing services to entitled persons to meet their clinical and personal care needs. Entitled persons include veterans and war widows who hold a Gold Card, and also those veterans with a White Card may be eligible for the service where the condition requiring nursing is accepted by DVA as war-related.

The aim of the program is to enhance the independence, quality of life and health outcomes of veterans and their widows by avoiding early admission to hospital and/or residential care through access to high-quality community nursing services.

How Can I Receive DVA Community Nursing Funds?

To receive DVA community nursing, the entitled person must obtain a referral from their GP or the Hospital Discharge Planner. Following this referral, the friendly team at Vital Home Health Services will liaise with you to arrange a convenient time to complete a comprehensive community nursing assessment by a highly experienced and dedicated Registered Nurse.

Vital Home Health Services offer a wide variety of Community Nursing services to DVA clients designed to maintain the health and wellbeing of the entitled veteran or widow. The services offered will depend on the client’s assessed individual care needs.

At Vital Home Health Services, person-centred care is at the heart of our services, where each client receives a service that is personalized, tailored and that takes into account each and every aspect of the person’s life, personal surroundings and preferences.

The Community Nursing services provided to DVA clients include:

Personal care including personal hygiene and getting dressed
Wound care and management
Skincare and management
Nutrition education, access and referral
Diabetes management and care
Chronic disease management
Assistance with referrals to allied health professionals as per General practitioner requests
Individualised care and service plans
Case management
Incontinence management

As well as these:

Medication administration, including prompting and monitoring
Rehabilitation
Palliative care and palliative care symptom management
Pain management
Arranging carer support services
Falls prevention and education
Pressure area care and management
Catheter care including male and female catheter insertions, removal
Suprapubic catheter management and care
Syringe driver management
Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube feeds
Nasogastric tube feeds

DVA Resources:

The Australian Department of Veteran Affairs along with the Older Persons Advocacy Network, have created an educational webinar, covering the following:

About the range of DVA services available to veterans and their families
What DVA Health Cards mean
How a patient can register as a DVA client to access DVA services

DVA Frequently Asked Questions:

To apply for the community nursing services, you must obtain a written referral letter from one of the following authorised referral sources:

a General Practitioner (GP)
a Nurse Practitioner specialising in a community nursing field
a treating doctor in the hospital
a hospital discharge planner,
a Veterans’ Home Care (VHC) Assessment Agency

The Gold Card is a treatment card that provides you with clinically required treatment for all medical conditions. Learn more here.

To be eligible to receive community nursing services for an assessed clinical need, an entitled person must hold a Veteran Gold Card (eligible for all assessed clinical and/or personal care needs) or a Veteran White Card.

The CVC Program is a DVA program to better manage and coordinate primary and community care for eligible Gold Cardholders who are most at risk of being admitted or readmitted to the hospital.

The CVC Program is focussed on providing additional support for Gold Card holders with one or more chronic diseases or conditions, and who have been identified as having complex care needs.