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VA Health Care: Important Steps Taken to Enhance Veterans' Care by Aligning Inpatient Services with Projected Needs

GAO-05-160 Published: Mar 02, 2005. Publicly Released: Apr 07, 2005.
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Highlights

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) operates one of the nation's largest health care systems. In 1999, GAO reported on VA's aged, obsolete capital assets, noting that better management of these assets could significantly reduce VA's operating costs. GAO further noted that VA could reinvest the savings to enhance veterans' health care services. In response, VA initiated its Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES) process. Through CARES, VA identified what health care services it should provide and in which locations through 2022. The CARES process included assessing alternative ways to align inpatient services by closing or adding services at existing VA medical facilities or establishing new facilities. In May 2004, VA published its CARES decisions, but did not provide a national comprehensive summary of all its decisions about the alignment of inpatient services. GAO was asked to provide additional information about the inpatient service assessments and decisions made by VA. To provide a national, comprehensive summary, GAO summarized the locations where VA (1) identified a need to evaluate alternative ways to align inpatient health care service to improve quality, efficiency, or access and (2) made decisions to realign inpatient services or leave inpatient services as aligned, or deferred decisions pending further study.

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Cost effectiveness analysisFederal property managementFinancial managementHealth care facilitiesHealth care planningHealth care programsHealth care servicesPatient care servicesProgram evaluationVeteransVeterans benefitsVeterans hospitalsVeterans' medical careProgram goals or objectives