BACKGROUND Veterans who are hospitalized in both VA and non-VA hospitals within a short timespan may be at risk for fragmented or conflicting care. To determine the characteristics of these "dual users," we analyzed administrative hospital discharge data for VA-enrolled veterans of any age in seven states, including any VA or non-VA hospitalizations they had in 2004-2007. METHOD For VA enroll...

OBJECTIVE This study examines the relative burden of cardiovascular disease in diabetic and nondiabetic admissions to Veterans Administration (VA) and non-VA hospitals. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Calendar year 1997 hospitalization data were collected from the VA Patient Treatment File and the National Hospital Discharge Survey, National Center for Health Statistics. Discharge diagnoses based...

OBJECTIVES We examined the impact of access to care characteristics on health care use patterns among those veterans dually eligible for Medicare and Veterans Affairs (VA) services. METHODS We used a retrospective, cross-sectional design to identify veterans who were eligible to use VA and Medicare health care in calendar year 1999. We analyzed national VA utilization and Medicare claims data...

PURPOSE Children may be tested with a variety of visual acuity (VA) charts during their ophthalmic care and differences between charts can complicate the interpretation of VA measurements. This study compared VA measurements across four pediatric charts with Sloan letters and identified chart design features that contributed to inter-chart differences in VA. METHODS VA was determined for righ...

OBJECTIVE To demonstrate the potential of the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS) for the calculation of a performance measure for eye exams in the diabetic population using Veterans Health Administration (VA) administrative data. DESIGN We calculated a 1-year HEDIS-defined patient denominator and three alternative denominators that considered coding factors in identifying a...

Obesity negatively affects multiple metabolic pathways, but little is known about the impact of obesity on vitamin A (VA)[retinol (ROL)], a nutrient that regulates expression of genes in numerous pathways essential for human development and health. We demonstrate that obese mice, generated from a high fat diet (HFD) or by genetic mutations (i.e., ob/ob; db/db), have greatly reduced ROL levels i...

Morphological characteristics of 108 cases of uni- and bilateral aplasia of the vertebral artery (VA) in reports or images of retrospective studies, including one recent case, published between 1967 and 2016 are analyzed. Incidence, gender, persistence of carotid-vertebrobasilar anastomosis (CVBA), associated with other vascular variants, and vascular pathology in each group of uni- and bilater...