The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides healthcare services to its Veterans across the USA including territories and possessions. Healthcare services are delivered through 18 geographically divided administrative areas called Veterans Integrated Services Networks (VISN). The key attribute in this dataset is VISN and is defined as a string of two characters from 01-23, excluding 3, 11, 13, 14 and 18 and has an officially recognized VA title. For example, VISN 06 is the Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network. VISNs can span across neighboring countries to include areas that are not contiguous. For example, VISN 08 includes Florida and Puerto Rico in addition to most of Florida and southern Georgia, and VISN 20 includes Alaska and parts of the northwest conterminous United States. Each VISN is built from Markets, Submarkets, Sectors and Counties derived from Census (2021) County data.

Geographies were developed using U.S. Census Bureau Tiger Line 2021 data as its our primary source. Data was clipped to shorelines using the Esri Data and Maps detailed shoreline data.

VISNs are composed of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) markets. Therefore, VISN boundaries align with the outer edges of their constituent markets’ boundaries. Markets cross state borders wherever it is necessary to keep outpatient clinics (e.g. CBOCs) and their catchment areas in the same market as their parent medical centers. Thus, VISN boundaries also cross state borders.

In, 2016 Senior Leadership considered the challenges of conforming VISN boundaries with state boundaries. It was agreed that VHA would not separate outpatient clinics from their parent medical centers due to added complexity. Many outpatient providers hold clinics at their mother facilities; clinics are on the same health record as their parent facilities.

VISN and market maps, created by VHA Chief Strategy Office (CSO), conform to these principals and are the official maps for VHA VISNs and markets.

While the Geospatial Service Support Center (GSSC) develops the feature classes depicting the various VHA geographies, the GSSC does not have the authority to modify or reorganize the boundaries. The boundaries are developed at higher levels of the VHA and passed to the GSSC to be translated into spatial features.