# Veterans' Choice in Hospital Care

> **NIH VA I01** · VETERANS ADMIN PALO ALTO HEALTH CARE SYS · 2022 · —

## Abstract

The mission of the Department of Veterans Affairs has been, since its inception, “To care for him who
shall have borne the battle,” yet the mode of providing that care has recently undergone sweeping
transformation. With passage of the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 (Public Law 113-
146) (“Choice Act”), Veterans' options for VA-sponsored health care have increased. Veterans can now
access care in VA hospitals or in non-VA settings through traditional VA community care and the recent
Veterans Choice Program (VCP). Ultimately, expanding non-VA options may lead to greater choices for
patients to potentially obtain care that is more accessible, timely, higher quality, and that may lead to better
outcomes. Sicker veterans who use hospital care for inpatient stays are some of the sickest and most
vulnerable VA patients, so planning for their care is paramount to ensuring access to high-quality care.
 A comprehensive examination of the use of VA and non-VA care, total VA spending, and outcomes is
needed to guide the development and expansion of community care programs like the VCP. Therefore, we will
estimate the change in utilization and spending on VA-provided and VA-sponsored care in the context of other
non-VA care (primarily Medicaid expansion). We will also study which patient characteristics and VA hospital
characteristics influenced Veterans' choice of VA or community care providers. Finally, we will examine the
impact of the VCP on hospital mortality for hospitalized patients. We will use innovative methods to link non-
VA hospital discharge data with VA data for 11 geographically diverse states to answer these questions.
 To obtain a comprehensive picture of veterans' utilization, we will obtain hospital and other provider data
from 11 state agencies (AZ, CA, CT, FL, IL, LA, MA, MO, NY, PA, SC). State patient discharge data includes
data from all non-federal hospitals in the state including inpatient care. We will measure all VA-sponsored
community care from state discharge data because these data report more comprehensive and standardized
information, such as the type of care and provider, than that available in Fee Basis claims data. We will link
state data to VA data and use quantitative methods to examine overall changes in VA-provided hospital care,
VA-sponsored hospital care, and hospital care covered by other payers before and after VCP implementation.
 Utilization and spending of inpatient stays provided/sponsored by VA and non-VA providers will be
estimated from Calendar Year (CY) 2011 to CY2017. We will estimate the impact of the VCP on total hospital
spending after adjusting for patient and VA hospital factors. We will also look at factors influencing choice of
hospitals and hospital mortality among hospitalized patients and whether it decreased after implementation of
the VCP.
 Next steps involve sharing findings with operational partners to guide VA strategic planning, budget and
reimbursement models, and p...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10209962
- **Project number:** 5I01HX002653-03
- **Recipient organization:** VETERANS ADMIN PALO ALTO HEALTH CARE SYS
- **Principal Investigator:** Jean Yoon
- **Activity code:** I01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-06-01 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10209962

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10209962, Veterans' Choice in Hospital Care (5I01HX002653-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10209962. Licensed CC0.

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