Data and Methods for Patient and Provider-Level Analyses: UNPROFOR and Somalia

UNPROFOR Data and Methods

Since our interest was also in comparing differences in utilization between U.S. personnel, foreign military, foreign civilians, and UN/NATO employees and officers, for this analysis we further grouped the Army patient data into these four categories. Assumptions made in determining these groupings were similar to those described below for the Somalia deployment. The only difference in patient groupings between Somalia versus UNPROFOR and Provide Promise is that for the latter deployment, UN personnel and NATO employees and officers were combined into a single category.

To examine overall differences in utilization across the four rotations, we present patient-level data obtained from briefing charts put together by the Navy's Fleet Hospital 6, which summarized for each rotation the number of outpatient visits, number of admissions, and proportion of inpatients with disease versus trauma-related conditions. For this comparison we needed information on both the Air Force and Navy hospitals that undertook the third and fourth rotations into Zagreb, in addition to those rotations done by the U.S. Army. This information could only be obtained from briefing charts. In addition, we utilized unpublished length of stay data for the Navy's Fleet Hospital 6 obtained from CAPT James Carlisle, Chief of Clinical Services, in order to compare how average length of stay differed across contingents during the fourth rotation. We used data for the Navy hospital for this comparison because the PASBA data for the two Army hospitals did not allow us to break down the foreign military category by individual contingent.

Somalia Data and Methods

Provider-Level Analysis

Since AMEDD personnel came and went at various times during the Somalia deployment, we counted the number of PROFIS personnel at the midpoint of each month. This allowed us to obtain a consistent snapshot of what the medical support looked like for each month of the deployment and how it changed over time.

We began with data on the total number of PROFIS personnel deployed to Somalia by unit and area of concentration (AOC) occupation. The number of PROFIS personnel at the midpoint of each month is shown over the course of the entire operation, starting with November 1992 through March 1994. Certain AOCs were grouped as follows: under the Preventive Medicine Officer category, preventive medicine physicians, entomologists, and environmental science officers were grouped. Administrative, logisticians, and operations officers were included under the health services officer category (i.e., those officers involved in administration or the operational aspects of a medical field unit).[2] The behavioral sciences category included psychologists and social workers.

For this analysis, because we wanted to examine how the specialty mix changed over time, we further grouped the AOCs into the following specialty categories: preventive medicine, primary care and medicine, surgical and related specialties, mental health, dental, nursing, administration and health services, and other specialties. Table A.1 lists the specialty categories and the AOCs that fall within each grouping.

Interpretation of the AOCs or specialty mix has to be done with caution. While a PROFIS individual is designated to fill a specific slot in a deploying medical unit, his or her MTF commander has a fair amount of leeway in terms of who actually may be deployed. If a commander cannot afford to lose a particular individual, he may send instead another to fill the PROFIS slot. In addition, the AMEDD has recently revised some of its AOC codes, which has made the interpretation of some of the PROFIS taskings ambiguous.

Patient-Level Analysis

The patient data cover the period between January 1993 and January 1994. Note that the data do not cover the initial few months (November and December 1993) or the latter few months (February and March 1994) of this operation. This is in contrast to the provider data, which covered all 17 months of this deployment. Also note that patient data were unavailable for April 1993 and August 1993, the two months when the rotation of U.S. troops and hospital units into the theater took place.

We were able to obtain data on outpatient visits, admissions, length of stay, clinic of service (or disposition), and patient category. Since our interest was in comparing differences in utilization between U.S. personnel, foreign military, and foreign civilians, for this analysis we further grouped patients into these three categories, as shown in Table A.2.

In terms of the foreign civilians and other foreign nationals, the three hospital units were not consistent in how they coded patients between these two categories, so we combined them into a single category. The foreign civilian category we use consisted mostly of Somali nationals, with a few non-U.S. civilians (e.g., relief workers).

We were also interested in comparing the distribution of patients across clinical services within a hospital. Table A.3 shows the four groupings we used to examine the inpatient services and lists the type of visits categorized under the outpatient listing. We were unable to separate out emergency room visits from other types of outpatient visits, since the coding was inconsistent across the three types of hospital units. For a separate analysis we also compared the distribution of surgical patients across the different surgical specialties, using data on patients' disposition (i.e., the last clinic of service) (see Table A.3).

[2]There are few PROFIS individuals in health services officer slots, since usually these AOCs will be organic to the division and the medical unit. Therefore, it is less common to augment these administrative-type positions via PROFIS.