CHAMPVA
Built the provider network
How It Works
Three programs. One reason they all exist.
Each one was built because the last one wasn't enough to close the gap.
If you haven't read how this started, start with our story01 — CHAMPVA Access
Coverage existed. Providers who'd take it didn't.
CHAMPVA is the VA's health coverage for eligible family members of certain veterans and survivors. On paper, it works like insurance. In practice, mental-health providers told us directly that reimbursement rates, slow credentialing, and claims paperwork made it too difficult to take on.
ValorWell's first fix was direct: build a network of licensed therapists who accept CHAMPVA, and handle the operational and billing work that makes it viable for them to say yes. A family with CHAMPVA coverage can come through ValorWell and turn that coverage into an actual appointment.
The CHAMPVA network worked. Then it became clear the same wall existed for a much larger group of veterans.
02 — VA Community Care (VACCN)
Authorized for outside care. Still couldn't get an appointment.
The VA's Community Care Network is supposed to let veterans see outside providers when the VA itself cannot provide timely or reasonably accessible care. Authorization, though, is not the same thing as an appointment.
The red tape runs both directions. Veterans face authorization and referral requirements. Therapists face credentialing, reimbursement, and administrative overhead that can make VACCN impractical for a small practice — the same basic problem we had already seen with CHAMPVA, at a larger scale.
ValorWell built the same kind of infrastructure here: managing the authorization and referral process on the veteran's side, and handling enough of the administrative burden on the provider's side that therapists can participate. The goal is the same as with CHAMPVA — coverage that actually converts into care.
Both of these fixes work — when the barrier is paperwork and process. Not everything broken in this system is a paperwork problem.
03 — The ValorWell Foundation
When the fix has to be structural, someone still needs care today.
Some of what's broken in CHAMPVA and VACCN isn't a process problem ValorWell can route around — it's a policy or structural problem inside a federal system, and those take time to change. That timeline does not help a veteran or family member who is entitled to coverage and still cannot use it.
That's what the Foundation exists for. It is not a substitute for CHAMPVA or VACCN, and it isn't for people who can get seen through those channels. It is for the narrower group the system is currently failing — people with real coverage on paper and no real way to use it yet.
$75 funds one completed therapy session. 100% of every donation goes directly to the treating therapist. None of it goes to ValorWell.
The model at a glance
VACCN
Scaled the same fix for a larger population
Foundation
Covers what's left while the harder fix is in progress
Where this leads