Rates of urgent care and emergency department usage have fluctuated over the years, largely increasing. However, as usage has increased, so have costs, and there is significant ongoing research on how to mitigate this trend. This is true within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) as well. For VHA, understanding how Veterans are referred into urgent care services and emergency departments will help policymakers better understand bottlenecks in non-emergency care services, hopefully reducing costs and improving Veteran access to high quality care.
The Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center (PEPReC) published a policy brief on the qualitative research of one of PEPReC’s doctoral students, examining the roles of and relationship between VHA urgent care clinics and VHA emergency departments. Read the full brief here.
PEPReC, within the Veterans Health Administration and funded in large part by the Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI), is a team of health economists, health services and public health researchers, statistical programmers, and policy analysts who engage policymakers to improve Veterans’ lives through evidence-driven innovations using advanced quantitative methods.
