OBJECTIVES:

The overall rate of obesity is rising in the USA as well as among Veterans. It is important that providers appropriately diagnose obesity and discuss treatment options with their patients. We investigate diagnosis of overweight or obesity compared to documented body mass index (BMI) in the veteran’s population.

METHODS:

There were 25 million enrollees as of December 2022 in Veteran’s Affair dataset. The data contain inpatient, outpatient files, lab information, survival and vital statistics that included height, weight and blood pressure. The data collected from 152 VA hospitals, 133 VA Community Living Centers, 958 outpatient clinics.

RESULTS:

90% of the sample was male and 10% was female. According to vital statistics each year around 1.3 million patients was overweight (26% of the sample) , 1.5 million patients had BMI>= 30 (30 % of the sample). However, around 100,000 patients each year is diagnosed with overweight, 680,000 patients diagnosed with obesity. Only 45% of obese patients we diagnosed with obesity and 7.7% of overweight patients were diagnosed with overweight. This discrepancy was consistent among different age groups.

CONCLUSIONS:

This study demonstrated that obesity is underdiagnosed compared to BMI among Veterans Population. This may result in insufficient resources being provided to patients reduce weight. Further investigation is warranted to identify causes of underdiagnosis and potential barriers to diagnosis.