Health Data Analytics Flashcards

A quality team reviews 6 months of door-to-balloon time data and calculates a mean of 68 minutes with a standard deviation of 12 minutes. What is the coefficient of variation (CV)?

Answer: 17.6%

The CV = (standard deviation / mean) × 100 = (12 / 68) × 100 ≈ 17.6%, expressing variability relative to the mean.

Which approach is most appropriate when an analyst wants to examine the relationship between two continuous variables, such as nurse-to-patient ratio and patient fall rate?

Answer: Scatter diagram with regression line

A scatter diagram displays the relationship between two continuous variables, and adding a regression line helps quantify the direction and strength of that relationship.

In outcomes measurement, 'attribution' refers to:

Answer: Crediting a patient outcome to a specific provider, team, or facility

Attribution is the process of linking a patient's outcome to a specific accountable provider, care team, or organization for performance measurement purposes.

A healthcare organization is monitoring its 30-day readmission rate over time using a control chart. Upper and lower control limits are set at 3 sigma. A data point falls above the upper control limit. The correct interpretation is:

Answer: A special cause has likely occurred and requires investigation

A data point beyond 3-sigma control limits is a signal of special cause variation, indicating something unusual occurred that warrants investigation.

Which ICD coding system replaced ICD-9-CM in the United States for inpatient diagnoses and procedures on October 1, 2015?

Answer: ICD-10-CM/PCS

ICD-10-CM (diagnosis) and ICD-10-PCS (procedure) replaced ICD-9-CM for all HIPAA-covered entities in the US starting October 1, 2015.

A quality team discovers that a spike in reported adverse events coincided with the launch of a new electronic event reporting system. This finding MOST likely represents:

Answer: Increased reporting due to improved access and ease of reporting (ascertainment bias)

Improved reporting infrastructure often leads to increased reported events without a true increase in harm, a phenomenon known as ascertainment or detection bias.

Which of the following is an example of a 'structure' measure in Donabedian's framework for healthcare quality?

Answer: Nurse-to-patient staffing ratios on medical-surgical units

Structure measures assess the attributes of the care setting, such as staffing ratios, credentialing, and physical facilities, rather than the care process or its outcomes.