I just want to make a few comments about what we do today.
For many years we had just these tertiary facilities, some 153, depending on the kind of medical centres that veterans actually had to travel to over the last 15 years or so. That's why you see our sites of care expanded to in excess of 2,400. Many of them are located in rural cities and small municipalities around the country, where they provide mental health and primary care services locally. Some have consulting services there as well.
It's also the reason that we have expanded the whole telemedicine approach for care in homes and the use of remote monitoring devices that monitor weight, blood pressure, and other physiologicals that feed into medical centres. So as Ms. Fischetti indicated, it's a real issue for us. I think you may beat us in the degree of rurality and the access to Internet, but it's certainly an issue for us as well.
Another benefit we give under veterans health benefits is to reimburse veterans for the travel to and from medical facilities when they require travel. Also, if there is excessive travel, which is really common, for example, in Alaska, we're more likely to pay for care to be received locally if we don't have a clinic so that we don't burden the veteran with long-distance travel.