title: Communication enhancement and best practices for co-managing dual care rural Veteran patients by VA and non-VA providers: a survey study.
abstract: Many rural Veteran patients receive healthcare services from both Veterans Affairs (VA) and non-VA providers. Effective management of dual care Veteran patients to ensure the best clinical outcomes is a VA mission. The previous VA studies indicate that coordination between VA and non-VA providers has been lacking for dual care management of Veteran patients. In this study, we propose that VA proactively shares information with non-VA providers to enhance the communication process and identify the best practices to be carried out by both VA and non-VA providers for better coordination. Structured questionnaires are designed and distributed to VA and non-VA providers to obtain their evaluations on the proposed VA proactive information sharing approaches and the best practice items for dual care management. The non-VA provider respondents largely support the proposed proactive sharing items by VA, with the lowest average score being 3.96 out of a 5.0 scale on one item. In terms of the best practice items on co-managing dual care patients, three out of five items are overall rated higher than 4.0 from both sides. A pair-wise comparison between VA and non-VA perspectives further shows that the difference in average ratings of a proposed item could be significant. For such best practice items, the implementations from both sides may not be most effective.
authors.affiliation: Healthcare Engineering Group, Dept of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, North Dakota State University, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND, 58108, USA, jing.shi@ndsu.edu.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Yidong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Ergin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Erdem
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Woodbridge
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fetrick
mesh_terms: D055317:Evidence-Based Practice; D016304:Hospitals, Private; D006787:Hospitals, Veterans; D006801:Humans; D008498:Medical Record Linkage; D010346:Patient Care Management / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012424:Rural Population; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D014493:United States Department of Veterans Affairs; D014728:Veterans