Brookfield, Conn. – September 22, 2026 -- ROM Technologies Inc. (ROMTech) said its PortableConnect Rehab System can address two structural barriers facing Department of Veterans Affairs knee-replacement patients: distance from rehabilitation sites and fractured coordination between VA and Community Care providers.
Rural Veterans face outsized travel burdens for post-surgical rehabilitation
Approximately 3 million rural Veterans are enrolled in VA health care, and 54% are age 65 or older. A national VA knee-replacement study found 40.8% of patients lived in rural areas, making repeated long-distance travel a barrier to consistent rehabilitation. The VA's 2026 revised budget request includes roughly $2.29 billion for Beneficiary Travel, though the agency does not break out spending attributable to rehabilitation or rural Veterans specifically.
Community Care now handles nearly two-thirds of VA knee replacements
The same national study identified 93,063 primary knee replacements among VA enrollees between October 2019 and July 2024. Of those, 58,152, or 62.5%, occurred through Community Care rather than VA facilities directly. The VA Office of Inspector General has repeatedly flagged referral delays and scheduling bottlenecks in this split system, shifting administrative burden onto patients during recovery.
ROMTech has deployed its platform to more than 200,000 patients, including 63 VA hospitals
PortableConnect provides clinician-directed therapy, remote monitoring and real-time recovery data in patients' homes. An internal analysis of 35,294 patients found users averaged 2.7 sessions per day, seven days a week -- approximately 38 sessions in the first two weeks after discharge, compared with 4 to 6 ambulatory physical therapy sessions typically delivered in the same window.
Self-reported outcomes show lower readmission and fall rates among 2,371 knee patients
Patients using PortableConnect after total knee replacement reported a 2.9% overnight hospital readmission rate and a 2.5% rate of falls with injury, compared with published rates of 6.7% and 8.0%, respectively. The cohort also reported a combined 2.6% rate of deep-vein thrombosis or surgical-site infection and a 2.8% manipulation-under-anesthesia rate, both at or below published benchmarks.
"Veterans should not have to choose between the protracted travel required to reach rehabilitation and missing it altogether,