Healthcare Statistics and Analytics Flashcards

A hospital reports a case fatality rate of 2.5% for a particular disease. What does this rate measure?

Answer: The proportion of diagnosed cases that result in death

Case fatality rate measures the proportion of individuals diagnosed with a disease who die from that disease.

Which statistical measure is most appropriate when data is highly skewed and contains significant outliers?

Answer: Median

The median is preferred for skewed data because it is not affected by extreme values (outliers) the way the mean is.

A health information manager calculates a hospital's net autopsy rate. Which deaths are EXCLUDED from the denominator?

Answer: Deaths where the bodies were removed before an autopsy could be performed

The net autopsy rate excludes from the denominator those cases where the body was removed by legal authorities before an autopsy could be performed.

In a frequency distribution, what does a bimodal distribution indicate?

Answer: The data has two distinct peaks or clusters

A bimodal distribution has two distinct peaks, suggesting the data may come from two different subpopulations.

What is the purpose of risk adjustment in healthcare outcome reporting?

Answer: To allow fair comparison of outcomes across facilities with different patient populations

Risk adjustment accounts for differences in patient severity and demographics so that outcomes across facilities can be fairly compared.

A hospital's average daily census is calculated by dividing the total inpatient service days by:

Answer: The number of calendar days in the period

Average daily census equals total inpatient service days divided by the number of calendar days in the reporting period.

Which data visualization type is BEST suited for showing the relationship between two continuous variables?

Answer: Scatter plot

A scatter plot displays the relationship between two continuous variables, with each point representing a pair of values.