Health Care for Our Nation's Veterans: A Policy Paper From the American College of Physicians.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the United States' largest integrated health care delivery system, serving over 9 million enrollees at nearly 1300 health care facilities. In addition to providing health care to the nation's military veterans, the VHA has a research and development program, trains thousands of medical residents and other health care professionals, and conducts emergency preparedness and response activities. The VHA has been celebrated for delivering high-quality care to veterans, early adoption of electronic medical records, and high patient satisfaction. However, the system faces challenges, including implementation of an expanded community care program, modernization of its electronic medical records system, and providing care to a population with complex needs. The position paper offers policy recommendations on VHA funding, the community care program, medical and health care professions training, and research and development.

Regional variations in cardiovascular risk factors and access to care among US veterans with cardiovascular disease.

BACKGROUND: It remains unclear whether cardiovascular risk factors and access to healthcare for veterans with cardiovascular disease (CVD) vary among US regions. This study sought to determine the extent of regional variations in cardiovascular risk factors and access to medical care in a cohort of veterans with CVD in the USA. METHODS: The 2016 Centers for Disease Control Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey was utilized to identify a cohort of veteran patients with CVD. Participants were classified based on four US regions: (1) Northeast, (2) Midwest, (3) South, and (4) West. We compared demographic data, medical history, and access to care for veterans of each US region. The outcomes of interest included financial barriers to medical care and annual medical checkup. RESULTS: Among the 13 835 veterans, 18.3% were from the Northeast, while 23.5, 37.1, and 21.1% were from the Midwest, South, and West, respectively. Veterans of each region differed significantly with respect to demographic characteristics, prior medical history, and access to care. Rates of financial barriers to medical care were similar across the four regions (7.3 vs. 7.1 vs. 8.0 vs. 6.9%, P = 0.203). Veterans from the West had the lowest rates of medical checkup within the past year (91.7 vs. 89.5 vs. 91.4 vs. 86.6%). On multivariate analysis, the Midwest [odds ratio (OR) 0.69; 95% CI, 0.53-0.89] and West (OR 0.53; 95% CI 0.41-0.68) regions were independently associated with lower rates of medical checkup within the past year compared to the Northeast. CONCLUSIONS: In this observational study involving US veterans with CVD, cardiovascular risk factors and frequency of annual medical checkup differed amongst each US region. Further large-scale studies examining the prevalence of impaired access to care and quality of care in US veterans with CVD are warranted.

The VA and Non-VA Experience of Tracking Good Care.

The VA Mission Act of 2018 allows for choice of health care for 9 million veterans in their community, but deciding where the best care is requires transparency. Recent reports questioning the transparency of reporting health care outcomes in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the largest US health care organization, pointed to flaws in how VA tracks and improves performance, and posed questions about the validity and transparency of using popular hospital ratings systems to define good care. To explore this further, the authors examined 3 widely referenced public health care ranking models - U.S. News America's Best Hospitals, Truven Health Analytics, and Hospital Compare - and the VA model. Upon examination, the authors find that metrics used across the 4 models are neither comparable nor transparent. Between 6%-46% reporting deficiencies were found in reporting of hospital metrics in non-VA hospitals, which reduces transparency for the public. In contrast, VA reporting is 100%. Comparing VA health care and Hospital Compare quality outcomes showed similar or better outcomes for VA for the same metrics of quality and for comparable health care costs. VA inpatient satisfaction falls significantly short of the private sector, but no individual VA outcome measure was found to contribute significantly to inpatient satisfaction. However, overall inpatient satisfaction increased over time with higher global hospital ranking in both VA and non-VA health care. Encouraging use of uniform rating models and reporting of metrics from all hospitals would improve transparency of current health care reporting to the consumer.

Quality and Value of Health Care in the Veterans Health Administration: A Qualitative Study.

Background The attitudes of Department of Veterans Affairs ( VA ) cardiovascular clinicians toward the VA 's quality-of-care processes, clinical outcomes measures, and healthcare value are not well understood. Methods and Results Semistructured telephone interviews were conducted with cardiovascular healthcare providers (n=31) at VA hospitals that were previously identified as high or low performers in terms of healthcare value. The interviews focused on VA providers' experiences with measures of processes, outcomes, and value (ie, costs relative to outcomes) of cardiovascular care. Most providers were aware of process-of-care measurements, received regular feedback generated from those data, and used that feedback to change their practices. Fewer respondents reported clinical outcomes measures influencing their practice, and virtually no participants used value data to inform their practice, although several described administrative barriers limiting high-cost care. Providers also expressed general enthusiasm for the VA 's quality measurement/improvement efforts, with relatively few criticisms about the workload or opportunity costs inherent in clinical performance data collection. There were no material differences in the responses of employees of low-performing versus high-performing VA medical centers. Conclusions Regardless of their medical center's healthcare value performance, most VA cardiovascular providers used feedback from process-of-care data to inform their practice. However, clinical outcomes data were used more rarely, and value-of-care data were almost never used. The limited use of outcomes data to inform healthcare practice raises concern that healthcare outcomes may have insufficient influence, whereas the lack of value data influencing cardiovascular care practices may perpetuate inefficiencies in resource use.