Military medicine
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The DoD and VA Infrastructure for Clinical Intelligence (DaVINCI) data-sharing initiative has bridged the gap between DoD and VA data. DaVINCI utilizes the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) to map DoD and VA-specific health care codes to a standardized terminology. Although OMOP CDM provides a standardized longitudinal view of health care concepts, it fails in capturing multiple and changing relationships beneficiaries have with DoD and VA as it has a static (vs. yearly) person characteristic table. Furthermore, DoD and VA utilize different policies and terminology to identify their respective beneficiaries, which makes it difficult to track patients longitudinally. The primary purpose of this report is to provide a methodology for categorizing beneficiaries and creating continuous longitudinal patient records to maximize the use of the joint DoD and VA data in DaVINCI. ⋯ DaVINCI has successfully combined DoD and VA data and utilized OMOP CDM to standardize health care concepts. However, to fully maximize the potential of DaVINCI's DoD and VA OMOP databases, researchers must uniquely categorize the DaVINCI cohort and build longitudinal patient records across DoD and VA. Because of the low other health insurance rates among DoD enrollees and their choice to enroll to a DoD Primary Care Manager, we believe this population to be the least censored in the DoD. Applying a similar concept through VA's priority groups (1-5) would enable researchers to follow ADSMs as they transition from the military.
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The prevalence of tobacco use in the Veteran population and among Veterans Health Administration patients remains high, resulting in significant health and economic consequences. This problem has generated many tobacco research studies and clinical interventions, which often rely upon tobacco use status data previously recorded in electronic health records (EHR). Therefore, the consistency and reliability of these data are critical. The Veterans Health Administration uses an extensive EHR system where tobacco use status can be documented either as free text (FT) or as health factors (HF). The current literature assessing the reliability of HF and FT data is limited. This analysis evaluated the agreement between HF and FT tobacco use status data. ⋯ Agreement between HF and FT data that document the tobacco use statuses of Veterans varied because of implausible data. HF data had fewer implausible tobacco use statuses, but FT data were recorded more frequently. Although HF and FT data can be reasonably relied upon to determine the tobacco use statuses of Veterans, researchers and clinicians must be aware of implausible data and consider methods to overcome this limitation. Future studies should investigate the ways of improving the consistency of EHR documentation by health care providers and benchmark HF and FT data against a gold standard like biochemical verification to determine accuracy.
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Operations in the Middle East have slowed, and near-peer tensions escalate. The U. S. ⋯ Furthermore, use of ACNPs in theater could advance deployed medical capabilities and help conserve the fighting force of the U. S. Military and its partners.
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Longitudinal research regarding the pre- and post-separation experience has been relatively limited, despite its potential as a major life transition. Separating from the military and re-integration to civilian life is noted to be a period of increased risk of significant adjustment challenges, which impacts a service member in a multitude of areas. Active duty service members with combat-related physical or mental health or pre-existing adjustment conditions may be more likely to separate from service and more at risk for post-military service adjustment problems. ⋯ These results appear to support previous research depicting that, for some service members, transitioning out of the military and re-integrating into civilian life can be a challenging adjustment. Many factors, including personal and social circumstances, prior mental or emotional difficulties, availability of social or community support or resources, can influence the adjustment outcomes of veterans. Service members with prior adjustment difficulties and/or those with blast TBI history (and ongoing neurobehavioral symptoms) may find the transition from military to civilian life even more challenging, given the potential substantial changes in lifestyle, structure, identity, and support.