DATA BRIEFS

ORH Hospital Medicine Analytics Team (HMAT) Data Briefs
HMAT Facility Tracker (3/2026) VHA & non-VHA Hospital Performance Comparison (6/2026) Top Hospital Medicine Discharge Diagnoses (8/2026)
ORH Emergency Medicine Analytics Team (EMAT) Data Briefs
Veterans’ Satisfaction with VA Tele-Emergency Care (3/2026) VA Express Care Clinics (6/2026) Tele-Emergency Care (Tele-EC) (8/2026)

Emergency Medicine Analytics Team (EMAT)

The Emergency Medicine Analytics Team (EMAT) was established to build VA's capacity to understand and improve acute, unplanned care for Veterans. EMAT looks across the full acute care continuum — not only VA emergency departments and urgent care, but also community care and virtual acute care — because Veterans increasingly move among these settings.

The goal of HMAT is to help ORH and is to help ORH and its operational partners improve the access, quality, and safety of acute care for Veterans, with a specific focus on rural Veterans, who are far less likely to live near a VA emergency department or urgent care clinic.

EMAT works in partnership with the National Emergency Medicine Office, Integrated Veteran Care, and Connected Care, pairing rigorous evaluation with operational translation.

EMAT is co-led by Anita A. Vashi, MD, MPH, MHS, at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Michael J. Ward, MD, PhD, MBA, at the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System..

HMAT & EMAT Project Highlights

Building the Hospital Medicine Data Repository (HMDR). To support ORH in improving hospital care in rural settings, the HMAT developed a centralized Hospital Medicine Data Repository to strengthen access to and oversight of VHA hospital medicine specific data. As part of this effort, HMAT is working to standardize definitions for hospital medicine stays and hospitalizations, identify facilities providing acute care, and characterize Veterans receiving these services. This foundational work enhances HMAT’s abilities to respond more efficiently and effectively to ORH priorities and emerging inquiries.

Building national data infrastructure for acute care.. EMAT is developing the data foundation for describing acute, unplanned care across VA. This includes an EMAT Operations Database and a set of standard definitions and methods for emergency and urgent care encounters, facility characteristics, and rurality so that acute care can be measured consistently nationally. EMAT shares these definitions and analytic best practices as guidance for operational partners and researchers working with VA acute care data.

Evaluating the policies and programs that shape where Veterans receive acute care.. EMAT evaluates the delivery models and policies that determine where Veterans go when care is unplanned. Current work includes VA's virtual acute care programs — VA Health Connect and Tele-Emergency Care — examining utilization, outcomes, quality, safety, and the experiences of Veterans, providers, and staff. EMAT is also evaluating VA's community urgent care benefit, including how it is being used, by whom, and what it means for continuity and quality of care, alongside the impact of opening new VA urgent care sites. A related line of work assesses staffing needs in rural VA emergency departments and urgent care clinics, where workforce capacity shapes what care can be delivered locally. Emerging work examines emergency care use among rural women Veterans and American Indian and Alaska Native Veterans.

Initiating the HMAT Partnered Research Initiative (PRI). To expand its reach and impact, HMAT released its first Request for Applications (RFA) in fiscal year (FY) 2025 to encourage VHA investigators to pursue research in rural hospital medicine. The RFA generated strong interest, with 13 applications submitted from a diverse range of institutions and investigators. In partnership with the Office of Rural Health (ORH), HMAT provided financial support in the form of two $50k projects. This initiative represents an important step in building research capacity and advancing the evidence base for rural hospital care within the VHA.

Surveying all VAMC hospital medicine sections. To better understand institutional differences between urban and rural hospitals, in FY 2025, HMAT conducted a national survey of all VHA facilities. This effort will generate detailed, facility-level data to characterize workforce composition, resource availability, and operational constraints affecting rural hospitals. The findings will inform ongoing and future research initiatives focused on rural hospital medicine. In addition, HMAT will make these data available to VA investigators to support broader collaboration and inquiry in this area.

Translating findings into quality improvement. EMAT's quality improvement work closes the loop between analysis and practice. Using a VA-developed clinical review and feedback tool, the team is assessing whether medications prescribed during emergency care encounters align with evidence-based recommendations, examining prescribing patterns, subsequent adverse drug events, and rural–urban variation. This work is moving from describing variation toward testing whether structured clinical feedback can improve prescribing practice.