Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is an integrated health care system in the US, providing care at healthcare facilities such as medical centres and VHA outpatient clinics to veterans. VHA medical centres provide services that comprise traditional hospital-based services such as surgery, critical care, mental health, orthopaedics, pharmacy, radiology, and physical therapy. It also offers medical and surgical speciality services, including audiology and speech pathology, dermatology, dental, geriatrics, neurology, oncology, podiatry, prosthetics, urology, and vision care. A few medical centres provide advanced services such as organ transplants and plastic surgery.
VHA’s research services include biomedical laboratory research and development (BLR&D) service, which conducts preclinical and clinical research to understand life processes from the molecular, genomic, and physiological levels in diseases affecting veterans. It includes research on animal models and investigations of tissues, blood, or other biologic specimens from humans. Its clinical science research and development (CSR&D) service carries out research that focuses on intact human beings as the unit of examination. The health services research and development (HSR&D) service pursues research at the interface of healthcare systems, patients, and healthcare outcomes. Rehabilitation research and development (RR&D) service caters to the well-being of veterans through approved rehabilitation research projects, evaluation and technology transfer, and final clinical application.