In December 2017, Congress repealed the individual insurance mandate penalty. Given the poor health status of veterans, their higher demands for health insurance, and the substantial number of uninsured veterans, the repeal of the individual mandate should have a significant impact on the veterans. This article investigates how the repeal of the individual mandate effective in January 2019 is likely to affect the number of uninsured veterans and their enrollments in Veterans Affairs (VA) insurance. By analyzing 52,692 nonelderly veterans in Florida and California from 2008 to 2017, the findings suggest that the repeal will lead to a considerable increase in the number of uninsured veterans. Veterans who are unemployed, poor, and suffering disabilities are more likely to sign up for the VA insurance than better-off veterans. Thus, one of the important functions of veteran health care is to serve as a social safety net for vulnerable veterans. Thus, the Veterans Health Administration should establish a policy to minimize the expected negative repercussions of the repeal.
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA), responsible for providing 9 million veterans with quality healthcare, is not insulated from concerns about efficiency. In the aftermath of the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital scandal in 2014, Congress passed the Veterans Choice Act of 2014, which allows eligible veterans to use non-VA hospitals instead of VA hospitals. After analyzing 118 or 119 VA hospitals each year from 2012 through 2017 in the U.S, this paper evaluates the efficiency scores of VA hospitals and examines how the 2014 Act has influenced their technical efficiency over time. Slack analysis shows that inefficient VA hospitals can improve efficiency by reallocating input resources, and regression analysis demonstrates that the overall technical efficiency of VA hospitals decreased by 0.164 after the implementation of the Act. This means that as more veterans used non-VA hospitals under the 2014 Act, the technical efficiency of VA hospitals decreased considerably. Given that a substantial portion of veterans’ demands for healthcare transferred out to non-VA hospitals, the VHA should evaluate whether the current capacity of VA hospitals is appropriate and try to reduce wasted input resources to improve efficiency.
As a reaction to the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital scandal in 2014, the Veterans Choice Act of 2014 was enacted to enhance veterans’ access to health care. This study evaluated the productivity change of a panel of 102 VA hospitals from 2011 through 2019 to examine how the Act influenced the overall VA hospital productivity. The results revealed that the overall productivity of VA hospitals declined over the period and VA hospitals were not operating at an optimal scale to produce maximum outputs due to a decrease in the number of veteran patients after the Act was implemented. In addition, the technical change value less than 1 implies that VA hospitals produced fewer outputs with the given input resources over the period due to lagged adoption of innovative health care technology.
An aging veteran population with a median age of 65, their inferior health status, and the rapidly growing number of women veterans propel veterans affairs (VA) hospitals to provide a wide range of nursing services. However, despite the significant roles of nurses and chronic nurse shortages in VA hospitals, there has been little research on the determinants of nurse turnover in the VA healthcare system. This study analyzed registered nurse turnover rates at a panel of 118 VA hospitals from 2015 through 2017 and found that nurse turnover is significantly influenced by patient mortality, job satisfaction, annual salary level, and preventable hospitalizations. These findings suggest that VA hospitals should maintain proper nurse workloads and implement programs that can improve nurses’ stress level and job satisfaction.
A Phase 1b, multi-center, randomized, double-blind, vehicle-controlled study was conducted in 48 adult patients with mild-to-moderate atopic dermatitis (AD). 17, and 14 patients received SB414 2% cream, SB414 6% cream and vehicle, respectively, twice daily for 2 weeks. SB414 showed trends suggestive of efficacy based on the change in eczema area severity index (EASI), itch numerical rating score (NRS) and target lesion severity score. Both SB414 2% and 6% were well tolerated, but 2% had a more favorable local tolerability profile with no quantifiable systemic exposure. Skin biopsies were obtained at baseline and Week 2 from a representative target lesion (LS) and from non-lesional skin (NL) at baseline. Gene expression analyses were conducted to assess lesional changes from baseline in the SB414 2%, 6% and vehicle-treated groups and difference between groups, as well as comparing with NL. Quantitative RT-PCR was performed using TaqMan Low Density Array (TLDA). Biomarkers from the Th2 and Th22 inflammatory pathways known to be highly associated with AD, including Interleukin 13 (IL-13), IL-4R, IL-5 and IL-22, were downregulated after two weeks of treatment with SB414 2%, achieving statistically significant 10.5 (p<0.01), 2.5 (p<0.01), 7.1 (p<0.05) and 7.5-fold (p<0.05) reductions over vehicle, respectively. The changes in Th2 and Th22 biomarkers as well as Th17 markers including IL-17A and IL-17F and clinical efficacy assessed as the percent change in EASI scores were significantly correlated in patients treated with SB414 2%. Overall, topical nitric oxide releasing 2% SB414 cream but not vehicle or 6% cream induced significant changes in AD biomarkers after 2 weeks of treatment. Further studies are ongoing.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.