Healthcare Statistics and Analytics Flashcards

A hospital has 300 staffed beds and recorded 90,000 inpatient service days in a 365-day year. What is the bed occupancy rate?

Answer: 82.2%

Bed occupancy rate = (90,000 ÷ (300 × 365)) × 100 = (90,000 ÷ 109,500) × 100 ≈ 82.2%.

In healthcare analytics, what does 'sensitivity' of a diagnostic test measure?

Answer: The proportion of true positives correctly identified by the test

Sensitivity measures a test's ability to correctly identify those who have the disease (true positive rate).

Which type of study design is considered the strongest evidence for establishing a causal relationship?

Answer: Randomized controlled trial

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) minimize bias through random assignment and are the gold standard for establishing causality.

A hospital tracks its 30-day readmission rate. Which metric does this primarily reflect?

Answer: Quality of care and care transitions

The 30-day readmission rate is used as a quality indicator reflecting the effectiveness of care and transitions between care settings.

What is the primary purpose of a confidence interval in healthcare statistics?

Answer: To express the range within which the true value likely falls

A confidence interval provides a range of values within which the true population parameter is likely to fall with a specified level of certainty.

When calculating a hospital's infection rate, which formula is correct?

Answer: (Number of infections / Total discharges) × 100

Hospital infection rate is calculated as the number of infections divided by total discharges, multiplied by 100.

A correlation coefficient of -0.85 between two healthcare variables indicates:

Answer: A strong negative relationship

A correlation coefficient of -0.85 indicates a strong negative relationship, where as one variable increases, the other tends to decrease.