November 16, 2010
HSR&D is pleased to announce the publication of "Quality and Utility of Secondary Data for VA Research" in the Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development. This single-topic issue highlights the use of VA's electronic data in improving healthcare for Veterans. Expert data analyses by VA researchers and managers has been a key contributing factor to the success of VA's quality improvement efforts and its ability to advance evidence-based care. This issue highlights these efforts across an array of topics, such as the accuracy of external cause-of-injury coding in discharge records for patients with polytrauma, comparing methods used to identify Iraq and Afghanistan war Veterans using VA administrative data, and what Medicaid data adds to research on VA patients.
This issue of JRRD is the result of an18-month collaboration between HSR&D's VA Information Resource Center (VIReC) and JRRD. VIReC's mission is to improve the quality of research that utilizes VA databases and information systems. Toward that end, VIReC develops and disseminates research-relevant information about VA data. For more information about VIReC, visit their website at http://www.virec.research.va.gov/.
