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VA Health Care for Women: Despite Progress, Improvements Needed

T-HRD-92-42 Published: Jun 19, 1992. Publicly Released: Jun 19, 1992.
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Highlights

GAO discussed: (1) the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) progress in improving health care services for women veterans; and (2) remaining barriers to women veterans' access to health care. GAO noted that: (1) VA has taken a number of actions in the past 10 years to improve women veterans' access to health care, including establishing an advisory committee, requiring VA medical centers to implement care plans for women veterans, establishing womens clinics, eliminating physical barriers to providing health care to women veterans, and improving its outreach efforts; (2) VA has not effectively implemented plans to ensure that women veterans receive appropriate cancer screening, which is critical because women veterans experience an unusually high incidence of cancer; (3) VA continues to have problems in providing complete physical examinations to women veterans; (4) some VA centers have undertaken innovative efforts to improve the quality of physical examinations for women; (5) while VA generally complies with accepted standards for mammography services, it does not inspect mammography equipment frequently enough; and (6) VA has not established adequate procedures to protect women veterans' physical privacy.

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Access to health careCancerHealth care servicesHealth resources utilizationHospital care servicesPrivacy lawQuality assuranceVeteransVeterans benefitsVeterans hospitalsWomen's rightsMammography