GOHOSPITAL Is Bringing Advanced Healthcare to Rural Veterans

Accessible healthcare for many Veterans is not just about getting appointments scheduled easily. For rural Veterans and those who live in remote communities, it's also about figuring out how to get there in the first place. A simple checkup could have them traveling for hours just to reach the nearest healthcare facility, which, for some, could be difficult.

It’s so easy to push an appointment back, especially if a healthcare facility is really that far away. But the problem is that many health conditions don’t wait. Many of these can be hard to treat later, and so getting a timely diagnosis as early as possible can make a huge difference.

This is the reality for Veterans living in rural America. For them, healthcare providers are fewer in number, and hospitals may be hours away. Transportation is the main barrier to their access to care.

Fortunately, new approaches to healthcare are beginning to address the barrier of distance. GOHOSPITAL, being developed by AutoMediX™, a PSI Company, is a hospital-grade mobile care delivery platform designed to bring advanced clinical, diagnostic, and procedural services directly to underserved communities.

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By bringing hospital-level capabilities closer to where patients live, GOHOSPITAL aims to make healthcare more accessible for Veterans and other patients who face long journeys to receive care. For Veterans who have spent years putting hundreds of miles on the road just to keep a doctor's appointment, GOHOSPITAL could make a meaningful difference. Here’s how this mobile healthcare model works.

The Rural Healthcare Challenge

Where Veterans live can have a major impact on how easily they can access healthcare. Many urban areas have multiple hospitals, specialty clinics, and healthcare providers within a short drive. Rural areas, on the other hand, have fewer options.

There is a lot to consider when a Veteran lives in a rural area, such as traveling for hours, taking time off work, or coordinating transportation with a family member or caregiver. For them, access to healthcare isn’t as easy as many think. Over time, distance makes it harder for Veterans to keep up with their routine appointments and ongoing treatment.

Understanding these challenges is important because recognizing these barriers enables healthcare providers and organizations to continue developing solutions that make care more accessible for veterans, regardless of where they live.

Jerry Ambrosh, Chief Strategy & Growth Officer at AutoMediX, a PSI Company, says the burden of distance is often underestimated.

“The barrier most people underestimate is that distance isn't just distance: it's everything distance sets in motion. For a rural veteran, a routine lab or specialty appointment can mean a two-hour drive each way and most of a day off work."

Those delays can have lasting consequences, starting with just putting off a routine screening or follow-up visit. But eventually, it leads to later diagnoses and more complex treatment.

As Ambrosh explains,

"So people defer: they skip the follow-up, postpone the screening, wait until something becomes urgent. What looks like a transportation problem is really an early-detection problem; by the time distance stops being a reason to put off care, the condition is often further along than it needed to be."

The challenge is often accompanied by healthcare workforce shortages and the closure of rural hospitals. In some communities, even accessing primary care means leaving town. This makes it even more difficult for rural Veterans to receive timely care.

Rural Veterans by the Numbers

Millions of former service members live in rural communities, where access to healthcare can look very different from what Veterans experience in cities.

These figures show that the challenge extends beyond geography. Many rural Veterans are older, live on fixed or limited incomes, manage service-connected disabilities, and have fewer local healthcare resources available.

While programs like VA Telehealth and Community Care have expanded access, long travel distances and provider shortages continue to make in-person care difficult for many Veterans.

What Is Rural and Urban?

Rural and Urban are commonly used when discussing healthcare access, but each term means more than simply living in the country or the city.

Generally, urban communities are located within or near large cities. Hospitals, specialty clinics, and healthcare providers are more concentrated in this area. Veterans living within the vicinity often have multiple healthcare options within a relatively short distance. In short, it is accessible for them, transportation-wise.

Rural communities, on the other hand, are located outside major metropolitan areas and typically have fewer healthcare resources. Depending on where they live, Veterans may have limited access to specialists, fewer nearby hospitals, and longer travel times to appointments. In this case, they usually have to travel for hours just to go to a healthcare facility.

Different Healthcare Access and VA Programs

Every Veteran's experience is unique, although geography often plays a significant role in how easily healthcare can be accessed.

Improving healthcare access isn't a new priority for the VA. Over the years, it has launched several programs designed to help veterans in rural communities receive the care they need. Some of these initiatives include:

These programs have helped expand healthcare access for countless rural Veterans, but challenges such as long travel distances, provider shortages, and limited access to hospital-based services remain.

That's where new solutions like GOHOSPITAL could play a complementary role, bringing hospital-grade care closer to underserved communities while supporting the VA's ongoing efforts to improve access for Veterans nationwide.

Although medical mobile units aren’t really new to the VA, as back in February 2025, the Phoenix VA Health Care System highlighted its mobile medical unit, which travels to shelters and community locations to provide primary care, mental health support, vaccinations, wound care, and other services for veterans experiencing homelessness.

Within its first six months, the unit had already provided care to more than 400 veterans, helping to reduce emergency room visits and prevent hospital readmissions by bringing healthcare directly to veterans.

Rural Healthcare Facilities

The VA operates five Veterans Rural Health Resource Centers (VRHRCs) nationwide. These centers focus on improving healthcare access for rural veterans by developing innovative care solutions, supporting research, and partnering with VA facilities and local organizations to expand successful programs.

What Exactly Is GOHOSPITAL?

As healthcare systems continue to explore new ways to improve access to care, GOHOSPITAL offers a different approach. The new rollout is set for deployment in late 2026 and January 2027.

“The care comes to the patient rather than the patient spending a day getting to the care. If that turns a deferred appointment into one a veteran actually keeps, or shortens the path to a diagnosis, that's the entire purpose. We want the experience to feel less like an ordeal to be endured and more like care that's actually within reach,” Ambrosh said.

What GOHOSPITAL Can Do

GOHOSPITAL is built to support advanced clinical capabilities that are typically available only at larger healthcare facilities.

Depending on community needs, this can include diagnostic testing, imaging, outpatient procedures, and other hospital-level services that would otherwise require patients to travel long distances. Therefore, it’s not the typical mobile healthcare that many are used to.

The main purpose of GOHOSPITAL isn’t to replace VA hospitals, local medical centers, or healthcare providers. Instead, it expands where care can be delivered by bringing advanced services closer to patients while supporting the providers already serving those communities.

According to Ambrosh, the concept was shaped by both research and firsthand clinical experience.

“There's well-documented research on rural veterans delaying or forgoing care because of travel burden, and a long record of mobile care being used to reach underserved communities, which established both the need and the demand."

Traditional Rural Healthcare vs. GOHOSPITAL

Traditionally, many Veterans living in rural communities have had to travel to receive hospital-based services. Now, with GOHOSPITAL, the burden can be reduced by bringing many of those capabilities closer to home.

GOHOSPITAL won't eliminate the need for traditional hospitals or VA medical centers. However, the help it offers could make certain services more convenient and accessible for Veterans living far from those facilities.

Which Veterans Could Benefit the Most?

The veterans who stand to benefit the most are those for whom travel itself has become a barrier to receiving care.

"The Veterans who benefit most are the ones for whom the trip itself is the obstacle—those in rural and remote communities far from a VA medical center, older veterans for whom a long drive is genuinely difficult, and veterans managing conditions that require repeated visits, where every trip is another full day lost," Ambrosh explained.

Veterans who may benefit from this type of healthcare model include:

• Veterans living hours away from the nearest VA medical center or hospital
• Older Veterans who find long-distance travel physically challenging
• Veterans with service-connected disabilities that make transportation more difficult
• Veterans managing chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, or cancer that require ongoing monitoring and follow-up care
• Caregivers who regularly accompany veterans to appointments and face the same travel burden

What This Means for Rural Veterans

GOHOSPITAL shows an evolution in how mobile healthcare can be delivered. Mobile clinics have long played an important role in expanding access, but they haven't always been equipped to provide hospital-level diagnostics and procedures.

Ambrosh says GOHOSPITAL was developed to help bridge that gap.

"Earlier mobile efforts often couldn't deliver true hospital-grade capability or maintain reliable clinical data. That's the gap GOHOSPITAL is built to close—not just presence in the community, but genuine diagnostic and procedural capability, with hospital-grade systems behind it."

If successful, this approach could complement existing healthcare services by bringing more advanced capabilities into communities that have traditionally had fewer options.

GOHOSPITAL Is Bringing Care Closer to Home

Access to healthcare has never been solely about finding the right provider. It's also about making that care easier to reach. Ambrosh believed that “the need has always been there; what was missing was the right platform to meet it.”

After years of serving their country, rural veterans shouldn't have to choose between the burden of travel and the care they need. Bringing healthcare closer to home won't solve every challenge. Still, it could make one important promise easier to keep: that every veteran has a fair opportunity to receive timely, quality care.