Veterans Affairs Hospital Productivity Change and the Policy Implications: A Research Note

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221094647
• Author: Dongjin Oh,Ahreum Han,Keon-Hyung Lee
• Date: 01 July 2023
• Subject Matter: Research Note

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221094647

Armed Forces & Society

2023, Vol. 49(3) 866 –879

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X221094647

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Research Note

Veterans Affairs Hospital

Productivity Change and

the Policy Implications:

A Research Note

Dongjin Oh1, Ahreum Han2, and

Keon-Hyung Lee3

Abstract

As a reaction to the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital scandal in 2014, the Veterans

Choice Act of 2014 was enacted to enhance veterans’ access to health care.

This study evaluated the productivity change of a panel of 102 VA hospitals from

2011 through 2019 to examine how the Act influenced the overall VA hospital

productivity. The results revealed that the overall productivity of VA hospitals

declined over the period and VA hospitals were not operating at an optimal scale

to produce maximum outputs due to a decrease in the number of veteran patients

after the Act was implemented. In addition, the technical change value less than 1

implies that VA hospitals produced fewer outputs with the given input resources

over the period due to lagged adoption of innovative health care technology.

Keywords

veteran, health care, productivity, efficiency, Malmquist productivity change index

1Graduate School of Defense Management, Korea National Defense University, Nonsan-si,

Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea

2Department of Health Care Administration, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, USA

3Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Keon-Hyung Lee, Professor & Director, Arnold L. & Priscilla Moss Greenfield Endowed Professor,

Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University, 627 Bellamy Building,

Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.

Email: klee2@fsu.edu

1094647AFSXXX10.1177/0095327X221094647Armed Forces & Society XX(X)Oh et al.

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