Skip to main content

Veteran-directed care program is effective

A new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System researchers finds that a program that gives veterans flexible budgets for at-home caregivers is at least as effective as other veteran purchased-care services. Published in the June issue of Health Affairs, the study shows that, although the average enrollee in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA)'s Veteran-Directed Care (VDC) program has more complex health burdens than veterans in other purchased-care programs, enrollees in both groups had similar hospitalization and cost trajectories.
VDC provides monthly budgets and counseling to veterans who need significant assistance with daily living, allowing them to hire personal care workers or family and friends as paid caregivers to help them continue living at home. The VDC program launched in 2009, and has proven very popular with veterans and their family caregivers, but is not yet operational nationwide.
"Given the popularity of this program, and our findings that enrollees have similar outcomes as enrollees in other programs, further expansion of Veteran-Directed Care may be justified," says Dr. Melissa Garrido, associate director of the Partnered Evidence-Based Policy Resource Center (PEPReC) at the VA Boston Healthcare System and research associate professor of health law, policy & management at BUSPH.
The researchers used VHA data from fiscal year 2017 to identify 965 VDC enrollees, 21,117 veterans receiving other purchased-care services at VHA medical centers that offered VDC, and 15,325 veterans receiving other purchased-care services at VHA medical centers that did not yet offer VDC but were interested in implementing the program. The researchers then looked at VHA hospitalizations and related costs for all of these veterans in 2016 and in 2018. When the researchers controlled for demographics, levels of care needed, duration of care, the biases of the data, and other factors, they found similar changes in hospitalization rates and costs from before and after enrollment in VDC or another program.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Boston University School of Medicine. 
Note: Content may be edited.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dark matter may be older than the Big Bang

Dark matter, which researchers believe make up about 80% of the universe's mass, is one of the most elusive mysteries in modern physics. What exactly it is and how it came to be is a mystery, but a new Johns Hopkins University study now suggests that dark matter may have existed before the Big Bang. The study, published August 7 in  Physical Review Letters , presents a new idea of how dark matter was born and how to identify it with astronomical observations. "The study revealed a new connection between particle physics and astronomy. If dark matter consists of new particles that were born before the Big Bang, they affect the way galaxies are distributed in the sky in a unique way. This connection may be used to reveal their identity and make conclusions about the times before the Big Bang too," says Tommi Tenkanen, a postdoctoral fellow in Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University and the study's author. While not much is known about its origins,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Home births as safe as hospital births: International study suggests

A large international study led by McMaster University shows that low risk pregnant women who intend to give birth at home have no increased chance of the baby's perinatal or neonatal death compared to other low risk women who intend to give birth in a hospital. The results have been published by  The Lancet 's  EClinicalMedicine  journal. "More women in well-resourced countries are choosing birth at home, but concerns have persisted about their safety," said Eileen Hutton, professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology at McMaster, founding director of the McMaster Midwifery Research Centre and first author of the paper. "This research clearly demonstrates the risk is no different when the birth is intended to be at home or in hospital." The study examined the safety of place of birth by reporting on the risk of death at the time of birth or within the first four weeks, and found no clinically important or statistically different risk between home...
Post a Comment
Read more

GSAT-11 satellite to be launched from French Guiana on Dec 5th

GSAT-11 satellite to be launched from French Guiana on Dec 5th GSAT-11 would be located at 74 East and is the fore-runner in a series of advanced communications satellite with multi-spot beam antenna coverage over Indian mainland and Islands, ISRO said. GSAT-11 is the next generation “high throughput” communication satellite configured around ISRO’s I-6K Bus. (PTI/Representational). Indian space agency ISRO is scheduled to launch GSAT-11, the “heaviest” satellite built by it, on-board Ariane-5 rocket of Arianespace from French Guiana on December 5. Weighing about 5,854 kg, GSAT-11 would play a vital role in providing broadband services across the country, and also provide a platform to demonstrate new generation applications, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said. It is the “heaviest” satellite built by ISRO, the space agency said. GSAT-11 is the next generation “high throughput” communication satellite configured around ISRO’s  I-6K Bus, and it...
Post a Comment
Read more