The Department of Veterans Affairs—the VA—operates the nation's largest and most diverse health care system. How many physicians does it need to carry out its principal mission-related responsibilities of patient care, education, and research? This book presents and demonstrates by concrete example a methodology to answer this basic, but extraordinarily complex, question.


The heart of the methodology is a decision-making process in which both statistical and expert judgment approaches can be used separately or in concert to calculate the number of physicians required, by specialty, for any facility in the VA system. Although the analyses here focus entirely on the VA, the methodology could be used to determine physician staffing for a wide range of public and private sector health care organizations.

Table of Contents


FRONT MATTER
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 - OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
2 - BACKGROUND
3 - OVERVIEW OF THE ANALYSIS
4 - THE EMPIRICALLY BASED PHYSICIAN STAFFING MODELS
5 - EXPERT JUDGMENT APPROACHES TO PHYSICIAN STAFFING
6 - CHOOSING AMONG ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO DETERMINING PHYSICIAN STAFFING
7 - MANAGEMENT USES OF THE PHYSICIAN STAFFING METHODOLOGY
8 - PROJECTING FUTURE PATIENT WORKLOAD
9 - AFFILIATIONS WITH MEDICAL SCHOOLS
10 - NONPHYSICIAN PRACTITIONERS
11 - CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
APPENDIXES
A ROSTERS OF STUDY COMMITTEE PANELS AND VA LIAISON COMMITTEE
B LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS