Statistics Week 1

Categorical data

, also referred to as scales of measurement, represent values or observations that can be sorted into a category. There are four types of categorical data: Nominal, Ordinal, Interval and Ratio.

false

The primary reason to keep statistics is for research.

false

The word "statistics" can only be used when referring to a quantity of data.

Outpatient facilities:

These include physician clinics, surgery centers, emergency centers, and the like. Outpatient facilities often use statistics to determine whether they are providing the proper level of care.

Behavioral health facilities:

These may be inpatient or outpatient facilities. They use health statistics to determine whether they are providing the proper services for the community.

Accreditation agencies:

These organizations use healthcare statistics to determine the most common diagnoses and procedures and whether the resources are available to treat patients with those diagnoses.

population

Twenty-five cases of TB have been reported in the past year,and a patient study is carried out using data from all 25 cases.

Another source of health information is the census. A census is defined as

a count of a particular population. The U.S. government has a census (a count of the people residing in the United States and their location). H

Hospitals:

Inpatient facilities use health statistics to help address staffing issues and to determine the types of services to provide. For example, if the number of patients in the intensive care unit is increasing, the hospital administration may want to consider adding beds and staff to meet the growing need.

Managed care organizations (MCOs):

MCOs use statistics to determine whether they are providing the correct level of care at the best cost.

qualitative

Patient's gender

vital statistics

What term applies to data collected on births, deaths, marriages, and divorces?

demography

What term applies to the study of human populations?

disease

What term best describes morbidity data?

NCHS

Which government department is the repository of vital statistics data?

Favorite type of TV program

Which of the following is an example of a qualitative variable?

Rank order on a test

Which of the following is an example of ordinal data?

date of discharge

Which of the following is patient demographic information?

ordinal

Which type of data is a form of ranking?

eye color

identify the qualitative variable.

Applied statistics

involves the application of those theorems, formulae, rules, and laws to solve real-world problems

equal.

the principal weakness of ordinal scale is that the number separating each score may not be___

theoretical statistics & Applied statistics

there are two main aspects of statistics:

Health statistics provide information about the health of people. Every person is a part of some health statistic.

For example, every person was born, so he or she is part of birth statistics. Eventually, every person dies and is included in death statistics. In between, anyone who ever uses the healthcare system will likely be part of health statistics.

Other organizations within the community collect statistics.

For example, libraries need information on what the public is reading in order to provide the correct types of reading material. Educational institutions need statistics about types of employment that students can get after graduation in order to improve the curriculum for future students.

the government needs to maintain statistics on the population in order to provide services

For example, the CDC is recognized as the lead agency responsible for protecting the health of the U.S. population by providing credible information to help individuals make the right healthcare decisions.

inpatient census

healthcare facilities also have a census, which is the count of inpatients present at a specific time and in a particular place. In hospitals, this is referred to as the ________. The hospital census is a source of primary information.

Substance abuse treatment facilities

: These programs may be inpatient, ambulatory, or a combination of the two. Statistics are important in this area to show the success rates of these facilities' clients.

Cancer registries:

A cancer registry may be maintained by a separate department or a function of the health information department. Each state also may have a state cancer registry that is responsible for collecting data about cancer in the state. A cancer registry collects data about the diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of cancer patients. These statistics are important in tracking cancer success rates.

sample

A coder in health information has coded 100 charts in the past week and her supervisor plans to check 10% of the charts.

Data is roughly defined as a fact

A measured or otherwise determined fact or proposition, basic facts and observations.

Descriptive statistics Inferential statistics

Applied statistics can be divided into two areas:

because HIM practitioners have a broad knowledge of healthcare facilities as well as immediate access to a wide range of clinical data, they are in the best position

B to collect, prepare, analyze, and interpret healthcare data. HIM practitioners must learn acceptable terminology, definitions, and computational methodology if they are to provide the basic and most frequently used health statistics.

true

Data and information are NOT the same thing.

Hospital departments also keep statistics on the activities they perform for patients.

For example, the laboratory department may keep data on the number of lab tests performed on inpatients and outpatients. The radiology department may keep data on the number of chest and hip X-rays. The physical therapy department might use statistical information such as the number of patient visits in deciding whether to hire additional physical therapists. These reports might be used in turn by the managers of the departments for productivity reports and combined to produce a report of activity for the entire facility. Hospital administration might ask you to keep data on the number of patients transferred to another hospital for a cardiac catheterization in order to determine the need for that service at your facility.

There are major healthcare collection entities that include

Governmental data collection (public health) National public health data collection National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) State data collection Local data collection Data collection also includes: Patient data collection Demographic and non-medical information Counts Test results Diagnoses/procedures Treatment outcomes and assessments

Role of the HIM Professional

HIM professionals are often at the forefront of collecting, and presenting much of the data needed in a health care facility. This requires a basic understanding of statistics. Results are only as reliable as input - therefore accuracy is key!

before they even exist

Health information management (HIM) practitioners must remember that, first and foremost, statistics must be gathered and formulated, or expressed in systematic terms or concepts, __________. HIM practitioners are usually the individuals who gather and formulate this information.

Home health:

Home health services provide care to elderly, disabled, and/or convalescent patients in their homes. These services keep the statistics to determine the types of services used by their patients. For example, a home health service would need to know the number of nursing visits, home health aide visits, physical therapy treatments, and patients with various types of equipment such as oxygen machines or other respiratory aids.

Hospices:

Hospice programs provide care and psychosocial support to terminally ill patients and their families. These services may be given in either the home or the inpatient setting. A hospice needs to know types of illnesses in order to match the appropriate caregiver with each patient.

Nursing facilities:

Long-term care facilities may use statistics to determine the types of payers their patients have. These statistics also are helpful in demonstrating to the public the types of patients being cared for.

qualitative

Marital Status

discrete

Number of chemotherapy treatments

quantative

Number of children in family

relevant and reliable.

Other common uses of statistics may include divorce rates in a country, accident rates in a state, crime statistics in a city, percent of HIV carriers in the world, and even the standings of candidates in a political race. To serve each of these and many other purposes, the figures used in the statistics must be _________

Healthcare researchers:

Researchers depend on healthcare statistics to perform various kinds of research. Some examples include research in managed care, health law and regulations, mergers and acquisitions of healthcare facilities, physician practice issues, different types of illness and risk factors, telehealth issues, pharmaceutical research, and so on.

applied

Select the type of statistics subdivided into descriptive and inferential statistics.

decision making

Statistics is really about ________. In every area of our lives, we are expected to make decisions. To do that, we must have some information. All organizations keep statistics in order to make decisions about their business. For example, an organization may use statistics to determine its markets, that is, to identify who is using its services and how it can increase those services. In the healthcare industry, there are compelling reasons to collect and analyze data.

"state"

Statistics refers to the collection of information and for the _______. It is derived from the Italian word "stato" meaning "state". Think about how our government agencies collect data such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the Administration of Aging, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) and so on.

Healthcare information is derived from both primary and secondary sources

Statistics usually come from primary sources such as the health record, and secondary sources get data from the primary sources.

Federal government:

The U.S. government collects information for public health issues. For example, the CDC reports data on deaths, birth defects, cancer, HIV/AIDS, just to name a few of the categories.

Primary Data Source Versus Secondary Data Source

The major primary patient data source is found in the patient health record. All the facts and data regarding a patient's care are entered at the point of care. Secondary data is data abstracted information taken from the health record and recorded into another document. Examples: List, register, index, and data abstracted from websites In summary, the health record is one of the most important primary sources of health statistics because it contains most of the health facts about patients.

true

Third-party payers have an interest in healthcare statistics.

daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.

This textbook (and our learning journey) is concerned ONLY with applied statistics and more specifically health care statistics. The health care industry is a major collector of data that are compiled

continuous

Time recorded to run a mile

Data → Information → Facts → Knowledge

To obtain the knowledge they need, organizations first must have data. Data are unprocessed facts and figures that can be deliberately selected, processed, and organized to provide useful information. This leads in turn to facts, which are pieces of information presented as the truth. And facts lead to knowledge, which is what we know. The sequence, then, is as follows:

ordinal

Top 10 scores on an SAT test

nominal

Type of insurance carrier

Descriptive statistics describes and analyzes

a given group without drawing any conclusions or inferences about a larger group such as a population. It deals with data that are enumerated, organized, and possibly graphically represented and with data can be compiled into a table or graph. An example is "the U.S. Census". All the statistics in your textbook are descriptive statistics.

Requestors of data include

administration and governing boards, medical staff, other treatment facilities, outside agencies and organization, insurers, and researchers to name a few. Data are requested by a variety of users for multiple reasons. It is important to understand why data is requested and how it is used.

Population refers to

an entire group. It contains a set of persons (or objects) having a common observable characteristic. Examples: U.S. Census conducts a population census A hospital consists of a specific population (a group of patients admitted for purposes of receiving medical treatment and care)

A constant is something that

assumes only one value. It is a value that is replaceable by one and only one number, (fixed value) and does not change. When constants are expressed as symbols, they are generally represented by the letters at the beginning of the alphabet (a, b, c). Example: Date of birth

Demographic variable is the study of

characteristics of human population. In includes the size of a population and how it changes over time, the composition of the population (such as age, sex, ethnicity), and geographic density. It is invaluable to CEOs to analyze the health care service needs of their communities and service areas.

Ordinal data (ranked data)

consists of values or observations that can be ranked or ordered. Ordinal number represents a specified (or ordered) position in a numbered series such as grouping in "low", "middle", or "high" scores; ranking from "high to low" or "worst to best" or surveys ranked on a scale from "1 to 5". Examples: Cancer is the third leading cause of death (3 is the ordinal #) IQ scores or test scores ranked in some manner

Discrete

data is expressed as a whole number or integer (a number without a fractional or decimal subdivision). Examples include number of children in family and number of pregnancies.

Theoretical statistics

deals with the development, derivation, and proof of statistical theorems, formulae, rules, and laws

Morbidity (disease) refers to

disease statistics and is gathered to provide data on the prevalence of disease. It is far more difficult to gather than mortality (death) data due to the lack of an adequate universal state and national reporting system.

Inferential statistics

gives information regarding kinds of claims or statements that can be reasonably made about the population based on data from a sample. Inferential statistics is concerned with reaching conclusions and generalizations about a population and are made based on information obtained from a sample. An example is when inferences are made about a population based on opinion polls. This type of statistics is found in more advanced statistical textbooks.

Grouped data

involves some type of grouping or combining of scores. The most common method of grouping is by counting or tallying like scores. All identical scores are tallied and the number recorded after the score. Example: If 50 students took the same exam and 8 received the same score of 92, then a tally of 8 would be placed after the score of 92

Information

is data selected, organized and processed for analytics or used as a basis for a decision. It is meaningful data and knowledge results from processing data. Data that is selected, organized, and processed is found to useful and meaningful.

Aggregate data

is data that is extracted from the individual (health) records and combined to form deidentified information about the (patient) group that can be compared and analyzed.

Data accuracy

is data that is free of identifiable errors.

Research data

is data used for the purpose of testing a hypothesis or answering a proposed question.

Data

is defined as "information, especially information organized for analysis or used as the basis for a decision; numerical information".

Statistics

is defined as "the mathematics of the collection, organization, and interpretation of numerical data". Reasonable decisions and valid conclusions may be drawn based on the analysis of statistical data.

Continuous data

is measurable quantities not restricted to a whole number. Data that fall into the category of "measured to the nearest". Data that can be measured in fractions or decimals but recorded to the nearest whole number are still continuous data. Examples include height, weight, and age.

Nominal data

is qualitative data in which a number is assigned to elements within a category. The data is often coded information (i.e., distinguishing a person's eye color with a code number, such as #1 for blue eyes, #2 for brown eyes). Examples include sex, or insurance carrier. It is inappropriate to perform arithmetic operations on nominal data.

Ratio data

is similar to interval data in that the intervals between successive units are of equal size; however, there is a zero starting point; therefore it can be manipulated mathematically. Examples: Age distribution The difference between 18 and 20 is exactly the same number as between 65 and 67—2 years. There is a zero point, in that, zero means unborn. Also a person 75 years old is three times as old as a 25-year-old

Data processing

is the preparation of information for processing by computers.

Data collection

is the process by which data are gathered

Statistical information also is extremely valuable in estimating

population growth in particular areas of the country and essential in planning and evaluating maternal and child health programs. The NCHS prepares and publishes national statistics based on vital statistics data because they are important in the fields of social welfare and public health.

Ungrouped data or raw data

refers to a distribution in which scores are ranked from "highest to lowest", or "lowest to highest", but each score has its own place in the array.

Mortality (death)

refers to death statistics.

Interval data

represents values or observations that can be measured on an evenly distributed scale beginning at a point other than true zero. It includes units of equal size beginning at a point other than true zero; there is no zero point. Examples: temperature measured in Fahrenheit degrees time (the time between each hour is always 60 minutes) The most important characteristic is that intervals between values are equal.

Another example of a primary source of information is vital statistics. Vital statistics refers to a

special group of statistics that record important events in our lives such as birth, marriage, death, and divorce. Healthcare facilities are interested in births and deaths, fetal deaths, and induced terminations of pregnancy and are generally responsible for completing certificates for births, fetal deaths, abortions, and occasionally death certificates. All states have laws that require this information. The certificates are reported to the individual state registrars and are maintained permanently.

A sample is a

subset or small part of a population. Information obtained from a sample is often used to generalize from the entire population. Example: A transcription supervisor lacks the time to check the accuracy of every report transcribed by every transcriptionist; therefore a sample is taken and the accuracy and quality of work is based on this sample.

Ambulatory care facilities also may keep a census. In ambulatory care facilities, this figure usually represents

the number of visits or encounters during a specified period, usually one day. An encounter isthe direct personal contact between a patient and a physician or other person who is authorized by state licensure law and, if applicable, by medical staff bylaws to order or furnish healthcare services for the diagnosis or treatment of the patient.

Enormous amounts of data and numbers are collected and tabulated daily in organizations. For the data to be useful and meaningful

various statistical methods and formulae must be applied. Collected data must be compiled into a form that will have significance and that can be used to make comparisons for decision making. Statistical data collection has increased due to the increasing availability of computers and statistical software packages.

Qualitative variables

yield observations that can be categorized according to some characteristic or quality. Examples include a person's occupation, marital status, education level, and race.

Quantitative variables

yield observations that can be measured. Examples include height, weight, and blood pressure. Quantitative data are subdivided into discrete and continuous data.

Data is used for accountability and statistical reports. Health care facilities must be accountable to state and federal licensing agencies, as well as third-party payers. It is used for research, to improve treatment protocols and to determining trends. Health care providers are increasingly rated by outside agencies-news outlet report the best hospitals in AmericaData is used for:

• Management decisions - Services - Facilities and equipment - Staffing - Quality assessment/improvement - Efficiency and setting standards - Employee assessment • Patient care decisions - Reducing hospital-acquired infections - Reducing medication error - Evaluating length of stay for a specific diagnosis