Weeks William B, Wallace Amy E, West Alan N, Heady Hilda R, Hawthorne Kara
Veterans' Rural Health Initiative, White River Junction VA Medical Center, White River Junction, VT, USA.
J Rural Health. 2008 Fall;24(4):337-44. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-0361.2008.00179.x.
The Veterans Health Administration (VA) provides comprehensive health care services to veterans across the United States. Recently, the VA established an Office of Rural Health to address the health care needs of rural veterans.
To review the literature on rural veterans' health care needs in order to identify areas for future research.
We conducted a literature review of articles listed in the Medline, CINAHL, and BIOSIS datasets since 1950. We reviewed and summarized the findings of 50 articles that specifically examined rural veterans.
The literature on rural veterans included 4 articles examining access to care, 7 evaluating distance technology, 4 examining new models of care delivery, 11 studying rural veterans' patient characteristics, 10 evaluating programs provided in a rural setting, 6 examining rural health care settings, and 8 exploring rural veterans' health services utilization patterns. Most studies were small, based on data obtained before 2000, and consisted of uncontrolled, retrospective, descriptive studies of health care provided in rural VA settings. Definitions of rural were inconsistent, and in 20% of the articles examined the rural aspect of the setting was incidental to the study.
The literature on rural veterans' health care needs warrants expansion and investment so that policy makers can make informed decisions in an environment of limited resources and competing interests.
退伍军人健康管理局（VA）为全美国的退伍军人提供全面的医疗保健服务。最近，VA设立了农村卫生办公室，以满足农村退伍军人的医疗保健需求。
回顾有关农村退伍军人医疗保健需求的文献，以便确定未来研究的领域。
我们对自1950年以来Medline、CINAHL和BIOSIS数据集中列出的文章进行了文献综述。我们回顾并总结了50篇专门研究农村退伍军人的文章的研究结果。
关于农村退伍军人的文献包括4篇研究医疗服务可及性的文章、7篇评估远程技术的文章、4篇研究新型医疗服务模式的文章、11篇研究农村退伍军人患者特征的文章、10篇评估农村地区提供的项目的文章、6篇研究农村医疗保健环境的文章以及8篇探索农村退伍军人医疗服务利用模式的文章。大多数研究规模较小，基于2000年以前获得的数据，且由对农村VA机构提供的医疗保健进行的无对照、回顾性、描述性研究组成。农村的定义不一致，在所审查的文章中有20%的文章中，研究背景的农村方面只是附带提及。
关于农村退伍军人医疗保健需求的文献需要扩充和投入，以便政策制定者能够在资源有限和利益相互冲突的环境中做出明智的决策。
