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Barriers to veterans health administration care in a nationally representative sample of women veterans

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Women veterans are generally less healthy than their nonveteran female counterparts or male veterans. Accumulating evidence suggests there may be barriers to women veterans’ access to and use of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) care.

OBJECTIVE: To document perceived and/or actual barriers to care in a nationally representative sample of women veterans and examine associations with VHA use.

DESIGN: Cross-sectional telephone survey.

PARTICIPANTS: Women who are current and former users of VHA from VA’s National Registry of Women Veterans.

MEASUREMENTS: Assessments of perceptions of VHA care, background characteristics, and health service use.

RESULTS: Perceptions of VHA care were most positive regarding facility/physical environment characteristics and physician skill and sensitivity and least positive regarding the availability of needed services and logistics of receiving VHA care (M=0.05 and M=−0.10; M=−0.23 and M=−0.25, respectively). The most salient barrier to the use of VHA care was problems related to ease of use. Moreover, each of the barriers constructs contributed unique variance in VHA health care use above and beyond background characteristics known to differentiate current users from former VHA users (Odds ratio [OR]=4.03 for availability of services; OR=2.63 for physician sensitivity and skill: OR=2.70 for logistics of care; OR=2.30 for facility/physical environment). Few differences in barriers to care and their association with VHA health care use emerged for women with and without service-connected disabilities.

CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight several domains in which VHA decisionmakers can intervene to enhance the care available to women veterans and point to a number of areas for further investigation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Women’s Health Sciences Division, National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA

    Dawne Vogt PhD

  2. Women’s Health Sciences Division, National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA

    Amy Bergeron MA

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA

    Dawn Salgado MA

  4. Tenet Healthcare, Dallas, TX, USA

    Jennifer Daley MD

  5. Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH, USA

    Jennifer Daley MD

  6. VA Center for Integrated Healthcare, Syracuse VA Medical Center, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Paige Ouimette PhD

  7. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Jessica Wolfe PhD, MPH

Authors
  1. Dawne Vogt PhD
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  2. Amy Bergeron MA
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  3. Dawn Salgado MA
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  4. Jennifer Daley MD
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  5. Paige Ouimette PhD
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  6. Jessica Wolfe PhD, MPH
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dawne Vogt PhD.

Additional information

This research was supported by a Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Award to Jessica Wolfe and Jennifer Daley, SDR 93–102, and support from the National Center for PTSD, Department of Veterans Affairs,

Guarantor: Dawne Vogt, PhD.

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Vogt, D., Bergeron, A., Salgado, D. et al. Barriers to veterans health administration care in a nationally representative sample of women veterans. J GEN INTERN MED 21 (Suppl 3), S19–S25 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2006.00370.x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2006.00370.x

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