Comparing mental and physical health of U.S. veterans by VA healthcare use: implications for generalizability of research in the VA electronic health records.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) electronic health records (EHR) offer a rich source of big data to study medical and health care questions, but patient eligibility and preferences may limit generalizability of findings. We therefore examined the representativeness of VA veterans by comparing veterans using VA healthcare services to those who do not.

Methods

We analyzed data on 3051 veteran participants age ≥ 18 years in the 2019 National Health Interview Survey. Weighted logistic regression was used to model participant characteristics, health conditions, pain, and self-reported health by past year VA healthcare use and generate predicted marginal prevalences, which were used to calculate Cohen's d of group differences in absolute risk by past-year VA heal

SUBMITTER: Fink DS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9733218 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature