PACT: Veteran's Health and Well-Being

The purpose of the study, which is funded by the VA’s Office of Analytics and Business Intelligence, is to conduct a survey of Veterans to capture novel predictors of hospital admission and identify clusters of complex patients based on survey- and claims-based covariates. This study provides the first empirical application of the Cycle of Complexity conceptual model that the study team developed and recently published, which postulates that patient complexity represents more than having multiple chronic conditions. It is critical to evaluate whether complexity defined on the basis of survey-based and claims-based covariates is more predictive than diagnosis of multiple chronic conditions based on claims data alone. The proposed patient survey is designed to measure a broad range of self-reported patient factors that increase Veterans’ risk for being admitted to hospital, including life stressors, perceived locus of control, grit, resilience, functional status, social support and loneliness, sleep problems, symptoms, food insecurity, and patient activation. This survey will help us understand, for the first time, the extent to which self-reported factors can markedly improve prediction of patient risk for hospital admission, which may help the VA Office of Analytics and Business Intelligence improve its risk prediction models. This project may also identify patient-reported outcomes (PROs) that can be effectively integrated into routine VA clinical practice, as the VA begins to explore inclusion of PROs into the VA electronic health record. We are requesting approval to conduct this survey to a nationally representative sample of 10,000 patients who obtain primary care in VA because there are no extant VA surveys that capture the range of patient factors that we propose to collect, which are not available in VA administrative databases. If we did not capture these patient factors, our risk prediction analysis might be incorrect or biased.

The latest form for PACT: Veteran's Health and Well-Being expires 2020-10-31 and can be found here.