KaiCare x Georgia Department of Veterans Affairs

Georgia veterans deserve direction, not a dropdown menu.

KaiCare bridges Georgia's 690,000+ veterans, three VAMCs, and thousands of community providers — so veterans always know who to call, what's next, and why.

From Our CMO, Jim Ginocchio

The Problems Georgia Veterans Face Today

Veterans are used to taking orders, not self-navigating.

When healthcare asks a service member to figure it out alone, the system fails. The highest-need cohort doesn't make follow-up appointments on their own.

KaiCare Answer

KaiCare assigns a named Medical Assistant to every veteran.

One person. One phone number. One relationship — month after month. The MA owns scheduling, outreach, and follow-up so the veteran does not have to.

VA and civilian doctors do not talk to each other.

The VA doesn't know what's happening in the civilian world of doctors, and civilian doctors don't know what's happening at the VA. Zero bidirectional communication.

KaiCare Answer

FHIR Gateway plus a Federal EHR Connector.

Every community visit lands in the VA record. Every VA record flows back to the community provider — closing the loop veterans have been left inside of for decades.

There is no follow-up care. Out of sight, out of mind.

Doctors rarely tell veterans when to come back. If the veteran forgets, they just do not come back. Chronic disease gets worse in the silence.

KaiCare Answer

Proactive monthly outreach plus RPM threshold alerts.

Every enrolled veteran has monthly outreach scheduled on the calendar. Threshold alerts fire when a vital reading is abnormal. The veteran does not have to remember — we do.

Apps are not friendly for veterans 55 and older.

Most VA technology assumes smartphone fluency that the highest-need cohort does not have. Literacy and UX assumptions exclude the veterans who need the help most.

KaiCare Answer

We do not require the veteran to use an app.

Our Medical Assistants pick up the phone and call them — every month, same voice, same person. Amazon Connect telephony handles the routing so the veteran just answers their phone.

The VA has many doors, and one key opens one door at a time.

Primary care, mental health, benefits, community care, pharmacy — every front door needs a different key. Veterans give up before they get through.

KaiCare Answer

One integration. We handle the rest.

The practice integrates with us once. We carry the connection to the Federal EHR, to GaHIN, to referral routing, to claims, and to care coordination. Single key, every door.

Rural South Georgia veterans have no direction.

Veterans near a VA hospital get access. Vets in South Georgia — around Tifton, Valdosta, Albany — have to find their own civilian providers with no guidance and no coordinator.

KaiCare Answer

A directory filtered by specialty, location, and wait time.

A VA care coordinator in Dublin or Atlanta can pull up a qualified community provider within drive-time standards in five seconds — with Federal EHR sync already enabled on arrival.

“Technology is the answer to the question. The question has to come first.” — Jim Ginocchio, CMO, KaiCare

Platform Capabilities

Seven Modules, Mapped to Georgia Veteran Pain Points

Each module sits on top of AWS HIPAA-covered infrastructure and is wired into the Georgia-specific data fabric — GaHIN, the three VISN 7 VAMCs, and the Epic-heavy community EHR landscape.

FHIR Gateway

Bidirectional FHIR R4 endpoint accepting data from any EMR — Epic (Emory, Piedmont, Northside, Wellstar, Children's, Grady), Oracle Health (Phoebe Putney, AU Health), athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, and NextGen — normalized before it reaches VistA/CPRS at Atlanta, Augusta, or Dublin today, and Oracle Health once the EHRM schedule reaches VISN 7.

Addresses: VA ↔ civilian zero-communication gap

Provider Network Portal

Self-service enrollment for Georgia community practices with credentialing, contract management, and compliance tracking — integrated with GaHIN, Georgia's state-designated HIE, so onboarded practices plug into statewide exchange on day one.

Addresses: "Many doors, one key" disjointed access

Referral Engine

Automated routing that matches Georgia veterans to the right community provider based on specialty, location, and MISSION Act 30-minute / 20-day access standards — one click for the VA care coordinator, no fax, no phone tag.

Addresses: Mental-health referral friction, rural access

Claims Bridge

EDI 837/835 processing aligned with CCN Next Gen East region fee schedules — Georgia moves from Region 2 (Optum Serve) into the consolidated East region in 2026. Our claims pipeline is already built for both.

Addresses: Consistency and collaboration across systems

Veteran Directory

Searchable provider directory for VA staff and veterans with real-time availability, ratings, and accepted programs — including rural-ready filters for Laurens, Dougherty, Tift, and Lowndes counties so the Ossoff–Collins Rural Veterans Transportation bill has a directory to plug into.

Addresses: Geographic disparity for South Georgia veterans

Quality Dashboard

Real-time HEDIS/AHRQ metrics and VA High-Performing Provider tracking across the Georgia community care network — drill-down by Atlanta (50-county catchment), Dublin (49 middle/south GA counties), and Augusta divisions, with named-MA accountability for every enrolled veteran.

Addresses: No-quarterback problem, self-advocacy burden

Federal EHR Connector

Direct integration with VistA/CPRS today and Oracle Health (Cerner Millennium) tomorrow via the joint HIE and Carequality exchange framework — GaHIN reached Carequality in 2025, so the statewide plumbing is already in place.

Addresses: Lack of continuity of care across transitions

All seven modules are production-ready on AWS infrastructure with HIPAA BAA coverage, and the Georgia deployment inherits the same unified data layer already live for multi-state KaiCare customers.

Architecture

How It Works: The Georgia EMR-Agnostic Bridge

One integration layer that connects any Georgia community EMR to the Federal Electronic Health Record — running against VistA/CPRS today and ready for Oracle Health when EHRM reaches VISN 7.

Federal EHR

VistA/CPRS today → Oracle Health

Joint HIE

GaHIN / Carequality

KaiCare Bridge

Normalize & Validate

FHIR / HL7 / CDA

Standard Protocols

Georgia Practice

Epic / Cerner / athena / eCW

01

Ingest from Any Georgia EMR

Accepts FHIR R4, HL7 v2, C-CDA documents, and manual upload. Emory is a Epic Gold Stars Level 10 shop, Piedmont / Northside / Wellstar / Children's are Epic, Phoebe Putney and AU Health run Oracle Health, and most community primary care practices run athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, or NextGen. Providers do not need to change their EMR — KaiCare adapts to them.

02

Normalize to Federal Standard

Every record is mapped to USCDI v3 data classes and validated against US Core FHIR profiles before transmission, ensuring data quality and compliance with the same federal standard already used for Carequality-based exchange in Georgia.

03

Push to the Federal EHR via GaHIN

Normalized records flow through GaHIN, Georgia's state-designated HIE — which reached Carequality in 2025 — and into the VA via the Joint HIE. No faxing, no phone calls, no manual entry at Atlanta, Augusta, or Dublin.

04

Pull Veteran Records Back

Bidirectional exchange means a community cardiologist in Marietta or a behavioral health clinic in Macon receives relevant veteran history from the VA before the first visit — which is exactly what closes the 14-day community care referral prep gap GAO documented in 2025.

Important for Georgia: All three VISN 7 VAMCs currently run VistA/CPRS — Oracle Health deployments for Georgia are not on the 2026 wave schedule. Our bridge runs against VistA today and is ready for Oracle Health in the 2027–2031 window. No platform re-architecture required.

Competitive Analysis

Why KaiCare Wins in Georgia

The only platform that combines EMR-agnostic integration, GaHIN readiness, RPM/CCM/RTM remote care, a named MA per veteran, AI coordination, and federal-grade compliance in a single stack.

CapabilityKaiCareOptumTriWestOracle HealthEpic
EMR-Agnostic Integration
GaHIN Integration — Ready
HIPAA-Native Architecture
RPM / CCM / RTM Built In
AI Care Coordination (Bedrock)
Named MA Per Veteran
Provider Network Management
Referral Routing
Claims Processing (CCN East Ready)
FedRAMP-Aligned (AWS)
Works With VistA AND Oracle Health
Veteran Journey Coverage
Total Capabilities12/124/124/124/122/12

Deployment Strategy

Georgia Implementation Roadmap

A Georgia-specific phased approach — Atlanta pilot first, then Augusta and Dublin, statewide, and finally across VISN 7 — not tied to the Michigan EHRM schedule.

Phase 1Q3 2026

Atlanta Pilot

5-10 practices in the Decatur / Atlanta / Marietta corridor

Focuses metro Atlanta — highest veteran density in the state (Fulton/Cobb/DeKalb = 127,806 vets).

Phase 2Q4 2026 – Q1 2027

CSRA + Middle Georgia Expansion

Expand into Augusta (Charlie Norwood) and Dublin (Carl Vinson) markets

  • Augusta onboarding leverages the 2025 Women Veterans Health Clinic launch — women veterans are VA Augusta's fastest-growing cohort
  • Dublin onboarding aligns with the new outpatient and women's health clinic covering 49 middle-/south-GA counties
  • Integrate AU Health (Oracle/Cerner) and Phoebe Putney (Oracle) — Georgia hospital systems not on Epic
  • Launch provider directory filtered for rural Laurens, Bibb, Dougherty, Richmond, Columbia counties

Covers the two VISN 7 VAMCs outside metro Atlanta — Augusta and Dublin — to reach veterans who currently have the least continuity.

Phase 32027

Statewide Georgia

Savannah, Columbus (Fort Benning), Albany, Valdosta, rural South GA

Rural South Georgia is where the CMO pain point about "no direction" hits hardest — directory + named MA model closes the gap.

Phase 42028+

Saturate Georgia + Federal EHR Readiness

100+ community practices statewide + ready for Oracle Health when EHRM reaches Georgia

  • Scale to 100+ enrolled community practices covering every county in Georgia — including rural CBOC catchments for Atlanta, Dublin, and Augusta VAMCs
  • Expand the women veterans specialty network for Charlie Norwood and the Dublin Women Veterans Health Clinic
  • Cut over from VistA/CPRS interfaces to Oracle Health FHIR endpoints when Georgia VAMCs land on the EHRM deployment schedule (2027–2031 window) — the bridge architecture carries forward with zero rework
  • GovCloud deployment path for FedRAMP Moderate authorization

Georgia-only commitment: KaiCare stays a Georgia-first platform. No cross-state scope creep — the work ends at the state line.

Infrastructure

AWS-Native, GovCloud-Ready, Atlanta-Co-Located

Every service in the KaiCare stack runs on AWS with HIPAA BAA coverage and GovCloud availability — and the production deployment runs in AWS us-east-1, physically co-located with Emory and Georgia's Epic-heavy hospital systems for low-latency FHIR exchange.

Auth

AWS Cognito

GovCloud Available

Database

Aurora PostgreSQL

GovCloud Available

Compute

AWS App Runner

GovCloud Available

Storage

S3 (KMS Encrypted)

GovCloud Available

AI / LLM

AWS Bedrock (Claude)

GovCloud Available

Telephony

Amazon Connect

GovCloud Available

Email

Amazon SES

GovCloud Available

SMS

Amazon Pinpoint

GovCloud Available

Atlanta Latency Advantage

Atlanta is inside AWS us-east-1 — the same region where Emory runs its Apple + Epic hospital of the future and where most Georgia Epic tenants terminate. Sub-millisecond FHIR round trips; no cross-region latency tax.

KaiCare's entire stack runs on AWS services available in GovCloud. Migration from commercial AWS to GovCloud is a configuration change, not an architecture change — enabling rapid FedRAMP alignment for the Georgia VA deployment without rebuilding the platform.

Ready to Bring Direction to Georgia's Veterans?

Three concrete next steps to stand up the first Georgia VA community care bridge — starting with a discovery meeting.

1

Discovery Meeting

Align with the Atlanta VAHCS EHRM coordinator and VISN 7 Community Care leadership on scope, timeline, and data-sharing requirements for the Georgia pilot.

2

Metro Atlanta Pilot Design

Co-design a 5-10 practice deployment in the Decatur / Atlanta / Marietta corridor, aligned with Atlanta VAHCS community care referral volume and GaHIN onboarding.

3

Technical Demonstration

Live walkthrough of the FHIR Gateway, provider enrollment portal, RPM/CCM remote care infrastructure, and named-MA care model — for VA technical evaluators.