Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. General Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Issues
   1. What is cost-effectiveness analysis?
   2. What costs should I measure?
   3. How do I adjust for the effects of inflation?
   4. How do I discount healthcare costs that are not incurred until the future?
   5. Should I discount healthcare benefits?
   6. How do I measure quality adjusted life years?
2. Overview of VA Cost Methods
   1. Which method should I use to find VA costs?
   2. What data are available on VA costs?
   3. How can I find the costs of a specific facility, or a specific department?
   4. How can I find the budget of a particular VA medical center?
   5. How can I compare medical/surgical stays in the VA to non-VA stays (e.g., Medicare)?
   6. How do VA costs compare to the cost of non-VA providers?
3. Direct Measurement of VA Cost
   1. How should I measure the activities of staff involved in providing an intervention?
   2. How can I find the cost of employing a specific type of VA staff?
   3. How can VA capital costs be determined?
4. Using the "Pseudo Bill" to Find VA Healthcare Cost
   1. What is the cost of physician services for inpatients?
   2. How can I estimate what Medicare would have paid for a VA inpatient hospital stay?
   3. What are outpatient facility payments, and how can I obtain them?
   4. Where can I find the cost of pharmacy?
5. Clinical Cost Function to Find VA Healthcare Cost
   1. How can a clinical cost function be used to estimate healthcare cost?
   2. What is retransformation bias, and how can it be corrected?
6. Average Cost Estimates
   1. What are the average daily costs of VA inpatient care?
   2. How do you define an acute, short stay hospitalization in the VA?
   3. How do I obtain the DRG value weights from Medicare?
   4. What is the average cost of VA outpatient visits?
   5. How can I use SAS to extract utilization data from PTF to find cost of VA rehabilitation and long-term care units?
   6. In the PTF, how do you categorize the bedsections into 10 categories?
   7. How do you categorize the CDR into the 11 inpatient cost accounts?
   8. What are the categories of care (CAT files) for the outpatient average cost dataset?
   9. Why does HERC Length of Stay (LOS) differ from PTF Main LOS in some cases?
   10. How do I find the HERC cost of outpatient visits by cohort of patients?
7. Decision Support System (DSS)
   1. What data are available in the DSS national cost extracts?
   2. How does the Decision Support System (DSS) estimate cost?
   3. How do I obtain access to DSS data files?
   4. How does the utilization reported in the DSS National Data Extracts (NDEs) compare to other VA databases?
   5. How valid are DSS data?
   6. How do I use the DSS National Data Extracts?
   7. How do I use production DSS data?
   8. How do I write a tool kit report to extract data from the DSS production system?
   9. What is the nature of DSS National Data Extracts (NDEs) that contain low cost outpatient encounters?
   10. What DSS data are available from the VSSC?
   11. What data changes have been made to important variables in the FY 2008 DSS core NDEs?
8. Patient Incurred Cost
   1. How should patient-incurred costs be measured?
   2. How do I estimate travel costs?
   3. How do I estimate the cost of caregiver time?
   4. How do I obtain the cost of acute hospital care from AHRQ web site?
9. Finding and Using Healthcare Data
   1. How can I get permission to access HERC Cost Data?
   2. How can I use databases to find the cost of healthcare used by patients outside of VA?
   3. How can I use VA databases at the Austin Automation Center?
   4. How do I obtain Medicaid or Medicare data?
   5. How do I cost adjust charges from private hospital data?
   6. How do I crosswalk hospital data from HCUP to Medicare cost reports?
   7. What are the commonly used state-specific names for Medicaid, and what are their web site addresses?
   8. How can I find pharmacy data in the VA health care system?
   9. How can I perform validity checks of pharmacy data?
   10. What can I do about missing data?
   11. What information is available on care provided to VA under contract?
   12. How can I estimate Medicare payments for an inpatient short-stay acute hospitalization?
   13. How can I use the VA fee basis files to find the cost of health care provided by private providers under contract with VA?
   14. How do I find non-VA health care datasets?
   15. How can I collect cost data from non-VA providers?
   16. Identifying Medical Surgical Stays
   17. How Does VA Provide Contract Care through Sharing Agreements?
10. Obtaining Health Economics Expertise
    1. How can I get a health economist to work on my project?
    2. How can I hire a health economist for our center?
    3. How can I get a health economics job?
    4. Will HERC write a letter in support of my grant proposal or career development award application?