VA Health and Benefits App

Improving the lives of Veterans, their families, and care providers, the VA Health and Benefits mobile app is modernizing how Veterans access and manage their health care and benefits information. The app surpassed the two millionth download — a significant milestone in giving Veterans convenient access to their VA health care and benefits via their mobile devices.

This immediate access to vital health and benefits information is resonating strongly with Veterans, particularly those living in remote or rural areas, where reaching VA facilities may be challenging. The app quickly became a lifeline for many.

With almost a million monthly active users who send over three hundred thousand secure messages and refill over a quarter of a million prescriptions – each month – the app’s strong adoption and Veteran-centered design have helped earn it a rating of 4.8 on the Apple Store and 4.6 on Google Play, on par with companies like USAA and Uber.  Users are saying:

• “This is one of—if not the most—important app on my phone.“
• “This is a huge timesaver.”
• “Veterans can have an active part of engaging with the VA at a higher tick…now it’s literally on your couch, and that just gives folks more sense of ownership and accessibility.”

Putting Veterans at the center

As the app’s popularity and use continue to grow, VA’s Office of Information and Technology works with users to identify challenges with VA digital services so VA can incorporate their feedback and new features to improve the experience. These have led to enhancements like:

• The app’s integration of biometric options like fingerprint and facial recognition to streamline access
• A new one-touch feature that generates a Proof of Veteran Status screen when you log in to make it quick, easy, and more private for you to prove Veteran status to retailers and access your Veteran benefits
• Crucial accessibility features for the 22 percent of users who leverage assistive technology – features such as the ability for blinded Veterans to access and read their decision letters through the app

If you’re a Veteran, caregiver, or dependent, you can sign up to participate in online feedback sessions related to the mobile app and other VA digital tools—to enhance them for all Veterans.

Features and tools Veterans want

• Quick and direct access to the VA Crisis Line for Veterans and their families
• Management of Health Care Appointments
• View Status of Claims and Appeals
• Read benefit decision letters
• Refill and Track VA Prescriptions
• Secure Message with Your VA Health Care Team
• Download Common VA Letters and Documents
• View VA Vaccine Records
• Locate VA Facilities
• One-touch Proof of Veteran Status
• Access Using Biometric Login

Upcoming 2024 features include health care appointment scheduling and check-ins, travel claim submissions, and more.

If you’d like to learn more about the app or download it, you can explore the VA Health and Benefits mobile app page.

By VA Office of Information and Technology

You can now watch short instructional videos about how to use the VA Health and Benefits mobile app’s most popular features, in VA’s Feature Highlights: VA Health and Benefits Mobile App playlist, including:

• Claims and Appeals
• Prescriptions
• Secure Messaging

The videos also include insights from other Veterans sharing how they’re using the mobile app to help them manage their VA health care and benefits— anywhere, anytime!

The flagship mobile app is VA’s official all-in-one, on-the-go, easy-to-use, accessible, on-demand app, enabling you to manage your VA health care and benefits services at your fingertips.

About two million Veterans are already accessing their benefits and services safely and securely, wherever and whenever they need them.

What can you do with the Health and Benefits mobile app?

You can access and refill refillable VA-dispensed prescriptions, view your claims and appeals status, securely message your health care team, view and cancel health care appointments, upload documentation to VA, get your vaccine records, locate VA facilities, access the Veterans Crisis Line, show retailers your Veteran status, and more!

“Overall, I highly recommend the VA app to any Veteran who wants to simplify their health care and benefits management. It’s easy to use, reliable, and provides all the information I need to stay on top of my health and wellness. Thank you, VA, for creating such an excellent app for Veterans,” shared one Veteran and VA Health and Benefits mobile app user.

And for the first time ever, Veterans who are blind can read their decision letter by themselves within the VA Health and Benefits mobile app.

“One of the biggest things that Veterans get is their rating decision. No blind Veteran can read it. It’s paper. It’s a huge document sent to you, someone has to read it to you. I don’t know what you did but you can read rating decisions now in the app. OMG this is awesome! It was beautiful, I can now read it!” explained Claudia Baldwin, a U.S. Air Force Veteran.

Veteran designed and approved

VA designed and developed the mobile app with Veterans’ feedback, so it’s an easy, streamlined, and secure digital platform that allows you to complete everyday VA tasks from an IOS or Android smartphone and other mobile device such as an iPad. It offers a more personalized experience, allowing you to quickly and easily connect with VA to manage your health care and benefits needs.

VA will continue to use findings from Veteran research, quantitative user data, and benefit utilization to validate the design and features before we roll them out to all Veterans.   

The VA Health and Benefits mobile app has quickly risen on the Apple App Store, receiving a 4.8-star rating, and on the Google Play Store, receiving a 4.6-star rating. The app lets Veterans access the resources they need, wherever they are, whenever they need them. Adoption of the app continues to grow.

Since its launch in 2021, there has been continued growth of the VA Health and Benefits Mobile App usage. In addition to more than two million unique user downloads, the app has more than 880,000 active monthly users, more than 200,000 monthly prescription refills, more than 970,000 monthly medical appointment detail views, over 380,000 monthly benefit letters downloaded, and more than 290,000 monthly secure messages sent.

Upcoming features

VA regularly releases new mobile app features.

Upcoming VA Health and Benefits mobile app features planned for release in the next year will allow Veterans to:

• View lab and test results
• Receive travel pay reimbursement
• Receive additional push notifications
• Schedule appointments

The app’s features will continue to expand and evolve based on Veteran needs.

Downloading the app is free, fast, and easy! Here’s how

To access the VA Health and Benefits mobile app, go to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store on your mobile device and simply search “VA” and download the VA: Health and Benefits mobile app.

For the first time ever, blind Veterans can now read their VA benefits decision letters inside the VA Health and Benefits mobile app. This new feature is part of VA’s move to improve its accessibility and enable Veterans to view their decision letters immediately, online, a significant improvement over previously waiting ten days to receive letters in the mail.

Claudia Baldwin is a blind Veteran who has benefited from this new accessibility change. She served in the United States Air Force for 5 ½ years and medically retired as a Staff Sergeant. For the past 15-plus years, she has worked on accessibility issues with VA and the Blind Veterans Association (BVA).

Baldwin said after the change took effect on May 9, 2023, “I don’t know what you did, but you can read rating decisions now in the app. OMG, this is awesome! It was beautiful. I can now read it! One of the biggest things that Veterans get is their rating decision. No blind Veteran can read it. It’s paper. It’s a huge document sent to you, and someone has to read it to you. It’s a very small percentage of Veterans who can’t read it, so we don’t have a loud enough voice and usually don’t get included in accessing important programs or documentation since the information isn’t accessible to blind Veterans.”

Blind Veterans can now download a PDF file from the VA Health and Benefits mobile app or by using their web browser and then using a third-party app, such as VoiceOver on iOS, to listen to the content in the PDF file. This option is made possible by the VA’s commitment to design accessibility of the VA Health and Benefits mobile app.

VA is committed to ensuring all Veterans have access to its services. Our VA Office of Information and Technology (OIT) team takes an “accessibility beyond compliance” approach, meaning accessibility is considered an integral part of the development process from the start rather than an afterthought.

The team conducted extensive feedback sessions on the experiences of blind and low-vision Veterans using the VA Health and Benefits mobile app. This research has helped the team identify ways to improve the app’s accessibility currently, and the team is constantly working to improve the app’s accessibility further. Assistive technology users accounted for 22 percent of sessions in 2022, and 23 percent so far in 2023.

By taking an accessibility-beyond-compliance approach, VA’s Section 508 Compliance team works across the Department to ensure VA products and services are accessible and usable by all Veterans with a wide range of disabilities. The team also provides resources to help VA employees and contractors comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, including a toolkit, training program, and help desk.

These resources can help to ensure Veteran research and feedback sessions are conducted in an accessible way with all users. The team’s work is essential, and VA encourages Veteran participation in research and feedback on tools and services.

You can help VA deliver digital tools and products that are more accessible and user-friendly for the entire Veteran community.  For more information on how to sign up for a research feedback session, please visit the Veteran Usability Site.

Veterans can now refill their prescriptions (Rx) using the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Health and Benefits mobile app. Existing users will need to download the latest version of the app to gain access to new features.

The VA Health and Benefits mobile app is VA’s official all-in-one, on-the-go, easy-to-use, accessible, on-demand app enabling Veterans to manage both your VA health care and benefits services at your fingertips.

Adding Rx refill makes the VA Health and Benefits mobile app more useful and multi-functional for about 2 million Veterans who have downloaded and are using the mobile app, plus those who will do so.

VA designed and developed the app with Veterans’ feedback, so it’s an easy, streamlined, and secure digital platform that allows you to complete everyday VA tasks from an IOS or Android smartphone. It offers a more personalized experience, allowing you to quickly and easily connect with VA to manage your health care and benefits needs.

Highlights of the Rx refill feature

The Rx refill feature allows Veterans to:

• View your VA active and non-active Rx history (up to 180 days);
  • Filter and sort Rxs
  • View Rx details
• Request refills of your refillable VA-dispensed Rxs;
• View pending (recently submitted or refill in-process) refills; and
• View tracking information, through delivery, for trackable refills.

The app provides a native mobile interface like the Rx refill feature of My HealtheVet. You can easily track refill requests submitted through the app or the My HealtheVet website and dispensed by a VA Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy using the app’s “Track Delivery” feature.

This feature means you can easily (with your phone’s biometric face recognition or thumb login capability) and securely log into the VA Health and Benefits mobile app to quickly and safely manage your VA prescriptions from anywhere. If you don’t have a compatible mobile device, don’t worry! You can still access web-based Rx refills at VA.gov or My HealtheVet.

Note: VA is undergoing an Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) effort, which may impact whether the My HealtheVet and Rx refill feature on the VA Health and Benefits mobile app are operational in your area. To learn more, visit the EHRM website.

Consolidated, fast, and intuitive access

The VA Health and Benefits mobile app offers a single-entry point for Veterans to access their most common VA health care and benefits transactions. You no longer need to figure out which website to visit or remember which password to use. VA’s Health and Benefits mobile app acts as the digital front door for Veterans, families, and caregivers, streamlining access to information and services and eliminating the frustration associated with siloed technologies of the past.

“The VA hit the nail on the head with this app. I can’t stress enough how useful it is. It used to be that I had to go to the computer and navigate different areas of the VA site, which at the time were unintuitive. It’s so much easier now,” shared a VA Health and Benefits mobile app user.

Haven’t downloaded the app yet? Here’s how

Accessing the VA Health and Benefits mobile app is FREE, fast, and easy! Simply search “VA” and download the VA: Health and Benefits app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store located on your mobile device.

To learn more about the mobile app and its other features—such as managing appointments; secure messaging; viewing claims and appeals and submitting related evidence; downloading VA letters; and locating VA facility locations—check out the VA Health and Benefits mobile app website.

VA will continue to roll out more new features to the app in the future.