Analysis of a VA/DoD High-Tech Joint Venture at Womack Army Medical Center

摘要

According to the August 1992 issue of U.S. Medicine, DoD and VA Hospitals hadsigned and executed 660 locally initiated sharing agreements, and have recently begun to enter into capital intensive joint ventures such as diagnostic imaging centers and even construction of hospitals. The primary objectives of VA/DoD joint ventures are to improve services to both VA and DoD beneficiaries through increased availability and accessibility to new technologies and services, and to reduce costs to the government by minimizing duplication and inefficient utilization of health care resources (Ramon, 1992). Even though studies to determine the cost effectiveness of VA/DoD joint ventures are absent in the literature, lobbying efforts by special interest groups to expand the 'joint venture' concept have intensified with the expectation that cost savings will be realized by participating organizations (Tokarski, 1989). Using a specific example of a local Magnetic Resonance Imager (MRI) joint venture between the Fayetteville Veterans Administration Medical Center (FVAMC) and Womack Army Medical Center (WAMC), the management problem was to determine how effective this joint venture has been at improving patient access to MRI technology.