Date of Conferral

2016

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Deborah Lewis

Abstract

The Non-Veteran Administration Care (NVC) is a program in which the Veterans Health Administration purchases health care when it cannot provide the health services needed for eligible Veterans. The rising cost of this program led to audits by the Office of the Inspector General and other entities. The scholarly problem for this DNP Project was the lack of oversight, accountability, and management, found throughout the audits of NVC, as well as a lack of evaluation of NVC. The purpose of this project was to ascertain if there was a relationship between the Non-VA Care Coordination program (NVCC) and utilization of care. The NVCC was implemented to eliminate the deficiencies cited by audits. Sleep study and chiropractic consults for FY 2013 (pre-NVCC) and FY 2014 (post-NVCC) were examined. Sleep apnea service was available at the local Veteran Administration Medical Center and chiropractic service was not. Utilization of care was determined by emergency room (ER) visits and admissions related to the consult. A logic model was used to conceptualize the project and the longer-term implementation and evaluation of NVCC, and descriptive statistics were used to analyze trends in the chiropractic data (sleep study consults were excluded from the analysis due to the minute number). There were a total of 859 chiropractic consults and 2,184 approved visits analyzed. The results revealed that Veterans who utilized the consults had no ER visits or admissions related to referrals for chiropractic consults. Completed chiropractic consults remained proportionality the same both years. NVCC had no association with the utilization of care. This scholarly project contributes to social change by empowering consumers and providing transparency in the government through audits that facilitate quality improvement and evaluation of the NVCC program.

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