VA Mission Act Access Map
May 07, 2019
Where are VA’s health care facilities? The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) oversees 172 VA Medical Centers and 1,069 “outpatient sites of care of varying complexity.” Under new standards developed by VA in compliance with the 2018 MISSION Act, and set to be implemented on June 6, 2019, qualifying veterans will be allowed to seek primary and mental health care at non-VA facilities (community care) if living further than a 30 minute drive time from the nearest VA facility offering such care. Critics of expanding VA’s Veterans Community Care Program (VCCP) contend that it amounts to backdoor privatization of the VA. Proponents argue that VA isn’t able to provide enough quality care in enough locations to meet veterans’ needs. Meanwhile, there are serious concerns from both sides about whether VA will be able to implement the nitty-gritty details successfully—such as standardizing how a “30 minute driving time” is measured.
Jump to the mapIn light of the June 6th Mission Act implementation and the controversies surrounding the Mission Act, we developed the interactive “VA Mission Act Access Map” for a forthcoming AEI report on the history of VA’s community care programs. Using VA’s published list of medical facilities, we plotted VA’s medical centers/hospitals and developed isochrones (polygons) showing the areas within a 30 minute drive time, using OpenStreetMap data and Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM) in order for the isochrones to reflect near real-time traffic conditions when generated. We also included over 900 VA health clinics, with isochrones. (VA medical centers in Alaska, Hawaii, and New Hampshire are designated as clinics on the map, since VA does not classify them as “full service medical facilities.”) Using Leaflet in RStudio, we added county lines and shading corresponding to veteran population per VA’s Counties Population Table.
The result is an interactive map that allows the user to zoom-in on a particular county, manually or by search function, to visualize the geographical differences of veteran population, VA medical center and VA clinic location, and 30 minutes’ driving time.
Note: Click on a facility marker to display facility name, or hover over a drive-time area to highlight that region in blue for VA hospitals or white for VA clinics. VA facility markers, VA clinic markers, isochrones, and counties/population shading may be toggled on or off. For best results when zooming to street level, toggle “counties” to off.
Due to the map’s data size, loading times will vary. This map is not optimized for smart phones or tablets. If you are having trouble viewing the map, here is the direct link. Thank you for your patience.