Under the Clay Hunt Act, Aptive has served as the third-party independent reviewer since 2020 and annually evaluates the effectiveness, patient satisfaction and cost-effectiveness of VA behavioral health and suicide prevention programs. These evaluations require integration of data from multiple sources, analyses designed to retroactively assess program effectiveness and impact, and report findings in plain language for a transparent understanding of each VA program’s impact on Veterans. VA relies on Aptive to lead this work and support delivery of required congressional reports.
Aptive supports one of the largest ongoing suicide prevention and behavioral health program evaluation in the federal government. This evaluation requires the application of rigorous and robust methodology to assess Veteran outcomes among both inpatient and outpatient VA programs.
Each year, Aptive engages with VHA stakeholders to identify mental health program goals and objectives in order to focus evaluations around the agency’s mission and the needs of Veterans. The team collaborates with VA program offices to gather context about treatment options and outcomes assessment as well as VA subject matter experts of clinical and administrative data in order to align program analysis to the most comprehensive and up-to-date data sources.
The team develops and executes a comprehensive methodology using metrics tied to access, patient outcomes, satisfaction and cost while accounting for sociodemographic, comorbidities and treatment engagement. Aptive compiles and validates data from Veterans’ electronic health records and combines this with other sources such as self-reported surveys and clinical forms. The team then uses advanced analytic methods to evaluate program performance and communicate evidence-based findings to VHA stakeholders.
As part of the comprehensive program evaluation, Aptive analyses patient satisfaction as well as program cost-effectiveness. Year-over-year analyses allow Aptive to track progress, identify programmatic challenges and utilize methodologies based on evolving conditions and program maturity.
For the past five years, Aptive has supported VHA in the submission of an annual report to Congress that included program effectiveness, patient satisfaction, cost-effectiveness and best practices across a variety of VA’s behavioral health programs. In addition to the summarized congressional report, Aptive provides a detailed technical volume that includes the methodology and analytic findings in detail so that VA leadership can better make informed decisions to improve program delivery and in turn patient outcomes.
Each year, Aptive leverages its prior work to expand the breadth and depth of the program evaluation analyses. VA behavioral health and suicide prevention programs are generally multi-faceted, serve unique target populations and have several goals for Veterans’ outcomes. With this in mind, Aptive continues to refine analytic strategies in order to help strengthen VA’s ability to leverage these findings to inform policy and operational improvements.
Aptive remains a trusted partner in supporting VA’s mission through program evaluation, accurate reporting, clinically relevant data analysis and continuous improvement of Veteran behavioral health and suicide prevention care.
