VA Report:: Better on Process But No Difference in Mortality

I have mentioned in previous posts the excellent care provided by the Veterans Administration. Well a new article shows that the VA does a better job in providing consistent care but despite this record there is no difference in its mortality rates.

A new study," published in the journal Medical Care, "shows its health outcomes are ... about like everybody else's." The VA recently highlighted the study as evidence of the quality of its system, "[h]owever, the study -- which synthesized the results of three dozen other studies that compared VA health care with care provided by non-VA providers -- concluded the VA performed well on many measures of medical care, but also found that the VA had little impact on the key question of whether the patient lived or died. ... What the latest study shows is the VA performs well on what are known as 'process' measures, whether a certain test was ordered, for example. But studies that compare health outcomes -- do patients in the VA system better or live longer? -- are equivocal".