{"id":208,"date":"2012-08-14T19:02:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T23:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=208"},"modified":"2012-08-14T19:02:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T23:02:00","slug":"socialized-or-not-we-can-learn-from-the-va-rand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=208","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Socialized&#8217; or not, we can learn from the VA &#8211; RAND"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rand.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/socialized-or-not-we-can-learn-from-the-va.html\">&#8216;Socialized&#8217; or Not, We Can Learn from the VA | RAND<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/economix.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/08\/03\/where-socialized-medicine-has-a-u-s-foothold\/\">recent post<\/a> on the New York Times&#8217; Economix blog, Princeton economics professor Uwe  E. Reinhardt addresses the common characterization of the British  health care system as &#8220;socialized medicine.&#8221;  The label is most often  used pejoratively in the United States to suggest that if anything  resembling Great Britain&#8217;s National Health System (NHS) were adopted in  the U.S., it would invariably deliver low-quality health care and  produce poor health outcomes.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Ironically,  Reinhardt notes, the U.S. already has a close cousin to the NHS within  our borders.  It&#8217;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.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Among the evidence Reinhardt cites is an &#8220;eye-opening&#8221; (his words) 2004 RAND study from in the <i>Annals of Internal Medicine<\/i> 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 href=\"http:\/\/www.rand.org\/pubs\/research_briefs\/RB9100\/index1.html\">a summary<\/a> of that study).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>RAND&#8217;s study, led by Dr. Steven Asch, found that the VA system delivered <i>higher<\/i>-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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Socialized&#8217; or Not, We Can Learn from the VA | RAND In a recent post on the New York Times&#8217; Economix blog, Princeton economics professor Uwe E. Reinhardt addresses the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=208\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8216;Socialized&#8217; or not, we can learn from the VA &#8211; RAND&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-va-healthcare"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}