Disabled Veterans' Care: Better Data and More Accountability Needed to Adequately Assess Care Page: 14 of 40
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B-283462
Our visits to selected field locations helped confirm the validity of our
concerns about the accuracy of VA's workload and resource data. We were
unable to validate worklo ad and resource data c o ntaine d in the capacity
report using information maintained at VA facilities because data were not
routinely available under the definitions developed for the disabling
conditions (see app. I).6 Several clinicians told us that the definitions used
in the capacity report had no clinical basis when it came to treating
patients. For example, as defined by VA's capacity report, seriously
mentally ill veterans represented about 81 percent of the universe of
veterans with special disabilities in fiscal year 1998. Yet the seriously
mentally ill category would not be tracked at the facility level because it
does not represent a meaningful grouping of patients who would receive
similar medical care.
Our site visits also found that despite 3 years of requirements to report on
capacity, management staff at VA facilities generally did no t know the
definitions used by VA headquarters to identify veterans with special
disabilities or the methodology used to develop workload data for their
facilities. For example, one facility offered substance abuse treatment in a
day treatment program instead of a traditional substance abuse clinic. The
capacity report indicated that this facility experienced a 17-percent decline
in the treatment of seriously mentally ill patients with substance abuse
disorders and a 9-percent decline in expenditures for this population.
Facility officials believed that the capacity report understated workload for
seriously mentally ill patients with substance-related disorders because
VAs methodology did not include the day treatment clinic as a program
serving this special disability population.GAO/HEHS-00-57 Disabled Veterans' Care
6Other groups, such as the minority staff of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, were
also unable to verify workload and resource data because of problems in obtaining reliable
or comparable data across facilities. See Minority Staff Review of VA Programs for Veterans
With Special Needs, prepared for Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, July 27, 1999.Page 12
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United States. General Accounting Office. Disabled Veterans' Care: Better Data and More Accountability Needed to Adequately Assess Care, report, April 21, 2000; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc291361/m1/14/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.