Table 4.

Policy Simulation Predicting Change in Monthly VA Primary Care Utilization with a One Standard Deviation Increase in Wait Times Stratified by Age and Selected Health Condition (SHC)

	Baseline	Simulation	% Change
Average wait time	47.9	68.6	43.2
Stratification
None (n = 116,113)	0.349	0.338	−3.2
No SHC (n = 32,080)	0.296	0.286	−3.4
At least one SHC (n = 84,033)	0.369	0.359	−2.7
<70 and no SHC (n = 18,137)	0.291	0.280	−3.8
<70 and SHC (n = 44,881)	0.358	0.350	−2.2
≥70 and no SHC (n = 15,463)	0.303	0.293	−3.7
>70 and SHC (n = 43,116)	0.381	0.368	−3.4
<65 years old (n = 36,016)	0.336	0.328	−2.4
65–69 years old (n = 33,095)	0.341	0.331	−2.9
70–74 years old (n = 28,236)	0.356	0.343	−3.7
75–79 years old (n = 22,704)	0.365	0.353	−3.3
≥80 years old (n = 14,313)	0.361	0.347	−3.9

Notes. Selected health condition is defined as anyone diagnosed with retinopathy, neuropathy, nephropathy, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, peripheral vascular, or metabolic disease according to Young et al.(2008) or anyone with congestive heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, valvular disease, peripheral vascular disease, renal failure, or obesity according to Elixhauser et al. (1998).

The coefficient, standard error, and p -value for the VA wait time are shown. Wait time is divided by 10 so the coefficient reflects a 10-day increase in wait time. Models also include Elixhauser comorbidities, diabetes severity index, distance to nearest VA medical center, distance to nearest VA outpatient clinic, station-level fixed effects, demographics, time since entering the sample, and month dummies. Full results are available from the authors upon request.