Effect of mental health staffing inputs on initiation of care among recently separated Veterans.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To estimate a causal relationship between mental health staffing and time to initiation of mental health care for new patients.

Data sources and study setting

As the largest integrated health care delivery system in the United States, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provides a unique setting for isolating the effects of staffing on initiation of mental health care where demand is high and out-of-pocket costs are not a relevant confounder. We use data from the Department of Defense and VHA to obtain patient and facility characteristics and health care use.

Study design

To isolate exogenous variation in mental health staffing, we used an instrumental variables approach-two-stage residual inclusion with a discrete time hazard model. Our outcome is time

SUBMITTER: Shafer PR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11540562 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature