ProACCeSS
Program on Access, Community Care, and Specialty Care Services
Ensuring that Veterans have timely access to care of their choice is a key priority area and major challenge for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Timeliness is a particular challenge for costly medical and surgical subspecialties, such as gastroenterology (GI), urology, and radiation oncology, where supply-demand mismatches often lead to long wait times and a need to refer patients to the community to meet existing standards for timeliness.
To address this core challenge, we have launched the Program on Access, Community Care, and Specialty Care Services (ProACCeSS). Funded by the VA Ann Arbor Center for Clinical Management Research (CCMR, a VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Innovation), this program seeks to facilitate broad collaborations and partnerships to promote research that improves the health of Veterans through better access to care. The program will seek to engage CCMR investigators and staff with an interest in access, community care, and specialty care services, and serve to foster innovative research on these key VA priorities.
ProACCeSS will use multiple approaches to achieve its central goal of establishing a VA partnered research center related to access, community care, and specialty care services. These approaches include:
- Convening CCMR investigators and staff with an interest in access and community care in a monthly seminar series.
- Cultivating relationships with partners and external advisors.
- Remaining abreast of the rapidly changing landscape of access and community care within VHA.
- Leveraging ongoing projects to develop local data management and analytic expertise in using VA operational and community care data.
Collectively, these approaches will equip CCMR investigators with the resources needed to successfully submit grants and conduct research that meet the needs of Veterans and VA operational partners in this high priority area.
