Why is VA medicine more efficient than civilian healthcare? Because ‘caring—not money—is our mission’
HealthExec January 22, 2024
If private hospitals and clinics mimicked the staffing strategies of the Veterans Health Administration, the former would employ almost 1 million fewer nonclinical workers.
In such a scenario, the financial savings would be enormous and the operational efficiencies vast.
This is according to researchers who compared employment data from the two sectors, focusing on relative ratios of administrative workers to clinicians.
Their key finding: In 2019, close to 30% of all private-sector healthcare employees worked in nonclinical roles while, in the VHA, administrative workers made up only 22.5%.
The figures represent an absolute difference of 6.8 percentage points and a relative difference of 30.2%.
The study’s lead and senior authors are, respectively, Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, and David Himmelstein, MD....