Panel Paper:
Confronting the One-Armed Bandit: Patient Satisfaction Following Department of Veteran Affairs Wait-Time Crisis Policy Changes
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Hoover - Mezz Level (Marriott Wardman Park)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Given the recent Department of Veteran Affairs wait-time crisis, exposed by CNN in a series of 2013 and 2014 articles and confirmed by the June 2014 VA office of the Inspector General report, inferences drawn from examining VA performance data are important to the analysis of VA health care policy reforms. This study attempts to identify VA hospital-level determinants of patient satisfaction following reformative policy decisions in the wake of the wait-time reporting crisis, utilizing Keller and Rady’s (1999) monopolist extension of Rothschild’s (1974) one-armed bandit problem in economics. Analyses are conducted using quarterly 2013 to 2017 performance data collected from a nationwide set of 147 VA hospitals in all 50 states. This study, when considering hospital-level VA primary care wait-time data and other performance measures, facility resources, and local area demographic characteristics, hypothesizes that 1) patient satisfaction scores will tend to be positively influenced by increased performance measure scores, including primary care wait-times, 2) patient satisfaction scores will tend to increase as facility resources increase to meet the relative demand from the local area veteran population, and 3) patient satisfaction scores will tend to increase as local area VA per capita expenditures increase. Implications drawn from this research may provide additional insight into the successes of reformative VA health care policy following the recent wait-time crisis.
Full Paper:
- Button - VA SAIL APPAM.pdf (419.1KB)
