Evaluation of Prosthetics Purchasing Process at VA Hospitals

摘要

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is the largest prosthetic device provider among all the U.S. healthcare systems. VA policy requires that all the purchasing requests be handled within 5 business days of request creation. Hence, it is of vital importance to ensure that the agents work with an efficient purchasing system that considers ergonomic issues to facilitate the purchasing process. In this study, we conduct a detailed task analysis on the prosthetic purchasing process at VA hospitals, and identify the issues that may affect the smoothness of the purchasing process. Furthermore, we develop a survey for the purchasing agents to evaluate the current process, as well as the usability of the current system. Responses are collected from a total of 30 agents from various VA hospitals nationwide. Overall, the purchasing agents provide positive feedback about the current system. It is also found that the more time an agent spends on the system, the more positive feedback the agent is likely to provide. Also, three existing problems in the current purchasing process are identified and the corresponding recommendations, which receive high ratings from the agents, are proposed to address the issues and improve the prosthetics purchasing system and process at VA.