The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a new online tool for patients to see the average time it will take to get an appointment at their local VA healthcare facility.

The tool, called Access and Quality in VA Healthcare and launched in mid-April, allows patients to look up how many days it will take on average for him to get an appointment at each VA hospital, compare data about average wait times and view the quality of care for each provider. The new website tool also has a veteran satisfaction rating for each VA healthcare provider. The VA has more than 1,700 healthcare locations.

Here’s how the tool works:  A veteran visits the website, clicks on the button “How quickly can my VA facility see me?,” clicks on his state on the map and sees the average time it will take to get an appointment from the time he tries to schedule it based on data from a recent month. For example, the VA clinic in Mt. Vernon, Ill., had an average wait time of 12 days in February. The data is updated monthly.

The VA launched the tool to give veterans more access to information, says Dr. Poonam Alaigh, acting under secretary for health, at the VA. The new tool is in response from hearing from veterans and healthcare providers that having all of the information together in one spot would be helpful, she says.

“It was important for us to be open and honest and help veterans make their decision based on what they deem important themselves,” Alaigh says.

Alaigh says the information will be helpful for veterans as they can make choices on where to go based on this data, she says. For example, if a VA hospital has a low patient satisfaction score, the veteran may choose to wait longer in order to go to a provider with a higher score, she says. “This empowers the consumer, which is the veteran, to be able to look at where he or she can get care and the urgency that he or she feels,” she adds.

Prior to implementing new digital tools, many news outlets reported the VA had long wait times for veterans to get in to see a doctor. Between March 15 and April 1, the total number of appointments scheduled by national VA healthcare providers was 8.53 million appointments, 94.2% of which were scheduled within 30 days of the patient trying to make it the appointment, and 5.8% were scheduled more than 30 days out, according to patient access data published on the VA.gov website.

This is a decrease in wait times compared with the same two-week period in 2016 when on average VA healthcare providers scheduled 6.46 million appointments, 92.5% of which were within 30 days and 7.5% were scheduled more than 30 days out.

The new online comparison tool is not meant to speed up healthcare, but rather to keep VA healthcare providers accountable and give veterans access to information, she says. On the day the tool launched, Alaigh says, the website received 1.4 million clicks, which she says demonstrates “a lot interest” for the tool.

In the first 10 days since the tool launched, the website had 51,293 visits. 5,000 consumers visit the site each day, according to digital analytics firm SimilarWeb.

The VA collects wait times and patient satisfaction data, however, prior to this tool the data was not available online. Over the last year, the VA gathered all the data into one spot and built the online tool. It did not require any investment in resources, Alaigh says.

By the end of May, the VA hopes to add a feedback button so veterans can provide suggestions, she says.