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Cowper DC, Yu W, Kubal JD, Manheim LM. Creating a VA Health Care Atlas. Paper presented at: VA HSR&D National Meeting; 2003 Mar 13; Washington, DC.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can create, access, integrate, and display geographically relevant information. Moreover, GIS can be used to examine population-level effects of services as reflected in geographic and spatial distribution of populations and allows predictive modeling. It can also associate, for example, patients with the nearest medical facility or provider, locate under-served areas, measure access to care (distance) to medical facilities in a VISN, and many other analyses relevant to VA. GIS has been used in the health care industry for epidemiological studies, disease tracking, program evaluation, epidemic outbreak investigations, site location and patient distribution analysis, and community needs assessment. The VA Health Care Atlas will include: (1) an overview and location of medical facilities in the VA health care system; (2) a profile of VA's enrollee population; (3) an examination of overall VA utilization and VA market share; (4) a depiction of patterns in health care use across the VA; (5) an examination of geographic variation in costs and quality indicators by specific patient disease categories; and (6) an assessment of geographic differences in veterans' VA and Medicare dual-utilization patterns.
