Oh Here We Go VA Mis-Classifying Veterans By Race/ Ethnicity

[Monkeyman]

So,a who is counting what??
Full Story here-- http://www.vard.org/jour/06/43/4/pdf/jia.pdf

Short version== http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=53914

We examined the racial/ethnic classifications of 1,084 veterans with stroke in Florida who received and outpatient services within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) HEALTH CARE SYSTEM.

We compared the reliability of racial/ethnic classifications from VA inpatient data with the VA outpatient data and the VA data with Medicare data. Misclassification of race/ethnicity in research data may produce spurious conclusions if overlooked or ignored.

Our results showed that the rate of unknown racial/ethnic classification in VA outpatient and inpatient data was high.We also found that black and white classifications in the VA data had stronger agreement with Medicare data and Medicare data may under represent Hispanic patients.

And again Why are we counting here?