Hospital benchmarking memo
For this exercise, you will play the role of an analyst at a small hospital. You have been asked to write a brief memo (maximum three pages single-spaced, 12 point font, 1 inch margins) explaining the results of a benchmarking study. As always in the course.
The benchmarks against which you will compare your hospital’s measures are national in scope. Your hospital developed its benchmarking data from several different sources:
· Average inpatient length of stay (LOS) was calculated over all inpatient
admissions for one year using the EMR system.
· Pneumonia and congestive heart failure readmissions figures were taken from a chart review of a random sample of 3000 admissions.
· Emergency department LOS was based on a small study of ED visits carried out by a graduate student.
· Patient satisfaction with the quietness of their hospital room was taken from the hospital’s HCAHPS results—theHospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems “Survey of Patients’ Hospital Experiences”; a national survey of people who experienced hospital admissions.
In addition to comparing your hospital’s results to national benchmarks, there are two other analyses you have been asked to perform:
Your hospital has a program in place since 2010 to reduce readmissions of patients with pneumonia by improving adherence to treatment protocols. You should also report on whether the rate of readmissions of patients with pneumonia has decreased since the start of the program.
Also, the hospital has noticed that men report lower satisfaction with the quietness of their room. You should report on whether the difference in satisfaction for men and women is statistically significant.
Your memo should address each of the benchmarked measures and additional analyses. For each measure, state whether the hospital performed better or worse than the national benchmark or whether it was not statistically distinguishable (i.e., the difference was not statistically significant). For the additional analyses, you will report whether hospital performance improved since 2010 and whether men were less satisfied than women.You should provide all the details of your statistical tests: which test you used, the value of the test statistic, etc.It is up to you whether you provide the results as confidence intervals or p-values. There are seven total tests to perform:
1. Average inpatient LOS vs. national benchmark,
2. 30-day all cause readmission rate for patients with pneumonia vs. national benchmark,
3. 30-day all cause readmission rate for patients with pneumonia: 2010 vs. current,
4. 30-day all cause readmission rate for patients with congestive heart failure vs. national benchmark,
5. ED LOS vs. national benchmark,
6. Patient satisfaction with quietness of room vs. national benchmark, and
7. Patient satisfaction with quietness of room: men vs. women.
You may use Stata or Excel to perform the calculations, or perform them by hand with a table of values from theZandtdistributions.
Your memo should include:
· A brief background and objectives section
· The seven analyses outlined above, including the statistical test performed, the test statistic, and an interpretation of the result.
·A brief conclusion with a summary of the lessons learned for the hospital.
Required Textbook: Veney, Kros, and Rosenthal, Statistics for Health Care Professionals, 2nd
ed., Jossey-Bass, 2009.