Building a Better Caregiver Experience to Improve Veteran Outcomes

As the U.S. population ages rapidly, one in four Americans is currently in a caregiver role of some kind, and according to a 2024 report by the RAND Corporation, more than 14 million of those are caregivers to military servicemembers and Veterans. This reality is giving rise to urgent conversations about the impact of caregiver wellbeing on Veteran outcomes—and holistic approaches to better support caregiver health and resilience.

A recent episode of Government Technology Insider’s Clickthrough podcast brought together two leaders at the forefront of caregiver advocacy and federal health program design: Steve Schwab, CEO of the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, and Monica Rosser, executive managing director of federal health at Maximus, VES’s parent company. The experts emphasized how caregivers often become invisible as they help Veterans navigate health and disability benefits and programs—even as they remain central to ensuring those in their care receive access to federal services. As part of a partnership between Maximus and the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, the conversation provided several key practices poised to shape collaborative efforts to support both Veterans and those who care for them:

Ensure caregiver voices shape the services designed for them
For Rosser and Schwab, building a stronger foundation for caregiver support starts with prioritizing service design processes that center caregivers themselves.

“When you design with caregivers instead of just for them, you end up with solutions that actually work,” notes Schwab. Key best practices include:

  • Prioritizing user-centered service design that invites caregivers as co-creators—adding human context that designers might otherwise miss
  • Gathering real use cases and daily pain points directly from caregivers at the start of service design processes
  • Using caregiver feedback throughout design and iteration for continuous improvement
  • Ensuring flexibility and accessibility for participation to ensure that vulnerable caregiver groups aren’t left behind due to digital or geographic barriers

Leverage user friendly technology to enable personalized, proactive care
A longtime caregiver herself, Rosser notes from firsthand experience that caregivers often need to make decisions quickly and under significant stress, making how information is delivered just as important as the information itself.

“When you’re in the trenches of day-to-day caregiving, looking for resources and looking for information, the onus should not be on you to hunt down the answers—we need to be proactive with technology enablement to source trusted information and bring it to the caregiver community,” Rosser says.

Empowering caregivers includes simple, easy-to-use technology including AI-powered tools to link fragmented information across disparate systems and programs. The experts recommend prioritizing:

  • Simplified navigation so resources are easy to find in moments of crisis
  • Predictive analytics to anticipate caregiver needs proactively
  • Non-negotiable data privacy protection to safeguard caregiver and Veteran data
  • Human-in-the-loop assistance to address unique circumstances where technology doesn’t provide all the answers

Look at the caregiver experience holistically
“The entire caregiving experience touches everything from physical and mental health to spiritual and social wellbeing, so the entire caregiving service offering needs to work together,” stresses Rosser.

Unfortunately, fragmented systems often force caregivers to search for help in moments of crisis, which is exactly when they have the least capacity. To address these pain points, the experts emphasize prioritizing a centralized digital front door where caregivers can access resources in one place, thereby breaking down silos between agencies, programs, and service types. In addition, care models that integrate caregivers into the clinical care team and planning from the start can help sidestep information breakdown and costly hospital readmissions.

Track caregiver metrics alongside Veterans’ clinical outcomes
Rosser and Schwab note that measuring success in caregiver programs requires looking at both the clinical outcomes for Veterans as well as the resilience and measurable wellbeing of caregivers.

As Schwab puts it, “The measure of success should be: are caregivers and their Veterans stronger, healthier, and more supported?”

Rosser recommends several metrics essential for measuring meaningful progress:

  • Caregiver-focused KPIs, including stress and burden scores, mental health indicators, respite care utilization, and quality of life
  • Care recipient outcomes such as health stability, hospital readmission rates, and adherence to care plans
  • Qualitative signals from contact center tone and sentiment analysis, as well as story-based insights from caregiver feedback that reveal what the numbers might miss

Prioritize collaboration and experimentation with federal technology partners and VSOs
All best practices are theory until the right people come to the table, note the experts. Collaboration between federal programs, trusted technology partners, Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs), and other stakeholder groups is foundational. Collaborative service optimization can enable:

  • Shared platforms and interoperable data infrastructure across federal agencies and technology partners
  • Human-centered models that bring together digital navigators, peer support networks, and employee/community resource groups to amplify efforts to support caregivers
  • Trusted partnerships—like those between the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and Maximus—that pair caregivers with others who have lived experience in Veterans support
  • Piloting and iterating on services for caregivers using shared resources and insight to amplify impact and scalability

Learn more
Explore the full Clickthrough episode to hear more from the experts on the important conversations shaping caregiver support and services.