3004. Using National VA Databases For Health Services Research
Philip M Colin, AAS, VA Information Resource Center, Hines VA, MW Sohn, VA Information Resource Center, Hines VA, N Arnold, VA Information Resource Center, Hines VA

Results: N/A

Workshop Objectives: Provide an introduction to the Veterans Affairs (VA) National Patient Care Database (NPCD) Medical SAS Datasets, nationally aggregated clinical and administrative veteran healthcare data maintained at the Austin Automation Center (AAC). These data contain information on each episode of care provided by the VA health care system including integrated patient care data across VA facilities and care settings, comprehensive data for research studies, information for workload analysis, and data for patient care analysis.

Workshop Activities: A workshop will be organized to provide participants with (1) an introduction to the Medical SAS Datasets most useful for health services research with discussion on data quality issues within these data; (2) information on the process for requesting access to the datasets, along with detailed instructions on how to use the Austin Automation Center mainframe for using these datasets; (3) a specific research application example which will highlight the topics discussed above; and (4) answers to frequently asked questions regarding research use of these datasets.

Target Audience: These workshops will be a valuable resource for VA researchers who want to use the NPCD datasets for their research.

Audience Familiarity: By providing information on data availability and quality and common issues in using NPCD datasets, this workshop can help VA investigators improve the quality of VA research.