NSF-Funded Study To Find Efficiency Models In VA Patient-Centered Medical Homes

A group of researchers led by an industrial engineer have been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to find efficiency models for patient-centered medical homes by studying the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest health system in the country.

Kai Yang, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit, is leading the research team, with an NSF grant of $552,000. The group will study the VA’s patient-centered medical homes, a model emerging as a way to improve health outcomes by focusing services around primary care.

Yang said they’ll study VA health services nationwide, working with the VA’s office of informatics and analytics. “We’re going to use the data they have to analyze the workload for each patient, and we’re going to model how to divide workload across team members,” Yang said.