'Socialized' or not, we can learn from the VA - RAND

'Socialized' or Not, We Can Learn from the VA | RAND

In a recent post on the New York Times' Economix blog, Princeton economics professor Uwe E. Reinhardt addresses the common characterization of the British health care system as "socialized medicine." The label is most often used pejoratively in the United States to suggest that if anything resembling Great Britain's National Health System (NHS) were adopted in the U.S., it would invariably deliver low-quality health care and produce poor health outcomes.

Ironically, Reinhardt notes, the U.S. already has a close cousin to the NHS within our borders. It's the national network of VA Hospitals, clinics and skilled nursing facilities operated by our Veterans Healthcare Administration, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs. By almost every measure, the VA is recognized as delivering consistently high-quality care to its patients.

Among the evidence Reinhardt cites is an "eye-opening" (his words) 2004 RAND study from in the Annals of Internal Medicine that examined the quality of VA care, comparing the medical records of VA patients with a national sample and evaluating how effectively health care is delivered to each group (see a summary of that study).

RAND's study, led by Dr. Steven Asch, found that the VA system delivered higher-quality care than the national sample of private hospitals on all measures except acute care (on which the two samples performed comparably). In nearly every other respect, VA patients received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, and access to follow-up.

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