DOI: 10.3886/e240689v1
title: HIFLD Open Veterans Health Administration Medical Facilities

description: The Veterans Health Administration Medical Facilities dataset includes Veteran Affairs hospitals, Veteran Affairs Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Programs (RRTP), Veteran Affairs Nursing Home Care Units (NHCU), Veteran Affairs Outpatient Clinics (VAOC), Vet Centers, and Veteran Affairs Medical Centers (VAMC). It should not include planned and suspended (non-operational) sites and mobile clinics. These definitions were set by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Policy Board in December 1998 and are the basis for defining the category and the additional service types for each VHA service site. These definitions cover sites generally owned by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with the exception of leased and contracted community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs). 1. VA HOSPITAL: an institution (health care site) that is owned, staffed and operated by VA and whose primary function is to provide inpatient services. NOTE: Each geographically unique inpatient division of an integrated facility is counted as a separate hospital. 2. VA RESIDENTIAL REHABILITATION TREATMENT PROGRAM (RRTP): provides comprehensive health and social services in a VA facility for eligible veterans who are ambulatory and do not require the level of care provided in nursing homes. 3. VA NURSING HOME CARE UNITS (NHCU): provides care to individuals who are not in need of hospital care, but who require nursing care and related medical or psychosocial services in an institutional setting. VA NHCUs are facilities designed to care for patients who require a comprehensive care management system coordinated by an interdisciplinary team. Services provided include nursing, medical, rehabilitative, recreational, dietetic, psychosocial, pharmaceutical, radiological, laboratory, dental and spiritual. 4. VA OUTPATIENT CLINICS: a. Community-Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC): a VA-operated, VA-funded, or VA-reimbursed health care facility or site geographically distinct or separate from a parent medical facility. This term encompasses all types of VA outpatient clinics, except hospital-based, independent and mobile clinics. Satellite, community-based, and outreach clinics have been redefined as CBOCs. Technically, CBOCs fall into four Categories, which are: &gt; (i) VA-owned. A CBOC that is owned and staffed by VA. &gt; (ii) Leased. A CBOC where the space is leased (contracted), but is staffed by VA. NOTE: This includes donated space staffed by VA. &gt; (iii) Contracted. A CBOC where the space and the staff are not VA. This is typically a Healthcare Management Organization (HMO)-type provided where multiple sites can be associated with a single station identifier. &gt; (iv) Not Operational. A CBOC which has been approved by Congress, but has not yet begun operating. b. Hospital-Based Outpatient Clinic: outpatient clinic functions located at a hospital. c. Independent Outpatient Clinic: a full-time, self-contained, freestanding, ambulatory care clinic that has no management, program, or fiscal relationship to a VA medical facility. Primary and specialty health care services are provided in an outpatient setting. 5. VET CENTER: Provides professional readjustment counseling, community education, outreach to special populations, brokering of services with community agencies, and access to links between the veteran and VA. 6. VA MEDICAL CENTER (VAMC): a medical center is a unique VA site of care providing two or more types of services that reside at a single physical site location. The services provided are the primary service as tracked in the VHA Site Tracking (VAST) (i.e., VA Hospital, Nursing Home, Domiciliary, independent outpatient clinic (IOC), hospital-based outpatient clinic (HBOC), and CBOC). The definition of VA medical center does not include the Vet Centers as an identifying service. This dataset is based upon GFI data received from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). At the request of NGA, text fields in this dataset have been set to all upper case to facilitate consistent database engine search results. At the request of NGA, all diacritics (e.g., the German umlaut or the Spanish tilde) have been replaced with their closest equivalent English character to facilitate use with database systems that may not support diacritics. The currentness of this dataset is indicated by the [CONTDATE] attribute. Based upon this attribute, the oldest record dates from 09/21/2007 and the newest record dates from 10/15/2007.<br><br>
description: Archived from the HIFLD Open GIS data repository, which was deactivated on August 26, 2025<br>