Abstract
Many rural Veteran patients receive healthcare services from both Veterans Affairs (VA) and non-VA providers. Effective management of dual care Veteran patients to ensure the best clinical outcomes is a VA mission. The previous VA studies indicate that coordination between VA and non-VA providers has been lacking for dual care management of Veteran patients. In this study, we propose that VA proactively shares information with non-VA providers to enhance the communication process and identify the best practices to be carried out by both VA and non-VA providers for better coordination. Structured questionnaires are designed and distributed to VA and non-VA providers to obtain their evaluations on the proposed VA proactive information sharing approaches and the best practice items for dual care management. The non-VA provider respondents largely support the proposed proactive sharing items by VA, with the lowest average score being 3.96 out of a 5.0 scale on one item. In terms of the best practice items on co-managing dual care patients, three out of five items are overall rated higher than 4.0 from both sides. A pair-wise comparison between VA and non-VA perspectives further shows that the difference in average ratings of a proposed item could be significant. For such best practice items, the implementations from both sides may not be most effective.
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References
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Acknowledgments
This research, in its entirety, was designed and conducted as a VA quality improvement activity. Funding was provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs; Veterans Health Administration; MidWest Mountain Veterans Engineering Resource Center (MWM VERC). Partial graduate research assistantship was also provided by National Science Foundation (Award #1126570). The views expressed herein and the recommendations made and conclusions drawn are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the United States government or any of its agencies.
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Shi, J., Peng, Y., Erdem, E. et al. Communication Enhancement and Best Practices for Co-Managing Dual Care Rural Veteran Patients by VA and Non-VA Providers: A Survey Study. J Community Health 39, 552–561 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-013-9797-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-013-9797-3