AUGUSTA (AP) – Veterans in some rural areas will get access to new health clinics utilizing telemedicine techniques under a national effort to modernize care for men and women who served in the armed services.

Farmington, South Paris, Dover-Foxcroft, Lincoln and Houlton will get new telemedicine clinics, which use computers and digital equipment to assist veterans in rural areas who are enrolled in the program.

The VA New England Healthcare System will also open a full-time clinic in Cumberland County to serve veterans in Greater Portland. Other full-time clinics in Maine are in Saco, Rumford, Bangor, Calais and Caribou.

More information on the telemedicine clinics and the Cumberland County clinic will emerge after Congress reviews the plans in the next two months, said Jim Doherty, spokesman at the Togus office Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“I think this is really going to benefit the veterans positively,” he said.

The changes are the result of the national Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services plan, also known as CARES.

“In New England, the national CARES plan will provide greater access to care for veterans and bring greater quality of care closer to where most of New England veterans live,” said Dr. Jeannette Chirico-Post, director of the VA New England Healthcare System.

David Brodeur, state adjutant of the Disabled American Veterans organization in Maine, said he welcomes expanded telemedicine services for veterans.

Establishing more satellite clinics could ease the burden on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 55 volunteer drivers who shuttle veterans to Togus and the five VA clinics in Maine, Brodeur said.

George Mathis, 59, a Navy veteran who lives in Newport, has been treated using telemedicine by the VA. He had a digital photograph of a bad rash transmitted to a specialist at the VA hospital in Boston, he said.

Telemedicine is an important health-care tool, but there’s no substitute for seeing a physician in person, Mathis said.