VA Utilization Files

Information on VA health services may be obtained by researchers with a VA appointment who are working on a study that has been approved by committee for the protection of human subjects. The VA hospital discharge files are known as the Patient Treatment File. The outpatient extracts of the VA National Patient Care Database are known as the Outpatient Care Files. The VA Pharmacy Benefits Management database contains information on dispensed prescriptions. Documentation of these data set and other health care data is available from the VIREC website.

For the convenience of VA health economists, HERC maintains a copy of the VA directive that defines outpatient clinic identifiers. These three digit codes are called DSS identifiers, although many VA staff still refer to them by their old name, as clinic stop codes. The most recent directive is posted for use by VA employees on the VA DSS web site.

HERC has also created national tabulations of VA cost and utilization data. These identify the bed section codes that are used to identify types of inpatient care provided by VA. The HERC tabulation includes the number of days of stay and the number of stays in each. The HERC outpatient tabulation provides the number of records that use each DSS identifier (clinic stop code).

[ View additional information on tabulations ]

To ensure the protection of VA information, we have restricted access to certain files (denoted by the "lock" icon). Contact HERC to download these restricted files.

• Outpatient Fiscal Year 2003 Decision Support System (DSS) Identifiers

  Date: 9/16/2004 | Size: 3.05Mb

  A copy of the outpatient identifier policy issued in 2003 which lists VA clinic stop codes and their associated Cost Distribution Accounts.

• Outpatient Fiscal Year 2000 Decision Support System (DSS) Identifiers

  Date: 1/14/2004 | Size: 1.17Mb

  A copy of the outpatient identifier policy issued in 2000 which lists VA clinic stop codes and their associated Cost Distribution Accounts.

• Outpatient National Tally of Annual Number to Each Clinic Stop FY1998-2006

  Date: 3/7/2007 | Size: 55Kb

  This spreadsheet has the national tally of the annual number of visits to each primary clinic stop since the 1997-1998 federal fiscal year (the year ending September 30, 1998).

• Inpatient Days And Inpatient Stays In Each Bedsection Fiscal Years 1993-2006

  Date: 2/26/2007 | Size: 37Kb

  This spreadsheet identifies how many Inpatient Days occur within each Fiscal Year. It gives the number of days of stay and the number of segments of stay in each PTF bedsection (a location that is roughly equivalent to a ward). “Stays” represents the number of hospital stays that include a segment in the bed section (records in the patient treatment bedsection files).

• Outpatient National Tally of Annual Number to Each Clinic Stop FY1993-2000

  Date: 1/23/2004 | Size: 41Kb

  This spreadsheet includes visits to both primary and secondary clinics stops since the 1992-1993 fiscal year. The two spreadsheets differ because this spreadsheet, the older spreadsheet, includes "secondary" clinic stops in its count of clinic visits.

• Outpatient Stops CDA Crosswalk

  Date: 1/14/2004 | Size: 34Kb

  This spreadsheet lists the VA clinic stops (now called DSS identifiers) associated with each Cost Distribution Account

• Inpatient PTF Bedsection and CDA

  Date: 1/14/2004 | Size: 18Kb

  This spreadsheet identifies the Cost Distribution Account associated with each VA bedsection.