Assignment: Healthcare Statistics & Research
Assignment: Healthcare Statistics & Research
Question Description
Can you help me understand this Statistics question?
Your CEO wants to review the benchmarking data used to compare Choice Hospital with other hospitals in the same geographic region. The Board of Directors is looking at expanding the Emergency Department or adding more in-patient beds. The CEO needs to know how Choice Hospital compares with other hospitals in the region to be part of the discussion and inform decisions on expansion in these areas.
As you assume the role the HCA at Choice Hospital, provide the data and analysis requested by your CEO as described below. In this exercise, assume that Choice Hospital is located in Colorado, and use these data provided by the Colorado Hospital Association for Colorado hospitals. If you wish to find data for your own state of residence, you may do that and start your search at your state’s Department of Health Web site.
For comparison of Choice Hospital to others in the state of Colorado of comparable size, you will use the specific data points requested, perform the calculations, and prepare the presentation of the data as follows:
You will first review the data available and summarize the data points as specified for this presentation by placing them in an Excel spreadsheet.
Calculate descriptive statistics for the data, as specified below.
Prepare an Excel spreadsheet of the data.
Review the data in the spreadsheet, and prepare a discussion of the data for Colorado hospitals compared to the data for Choice Hospital.
The table below includes the data for Choice Hospital:
Hospital Licensed Beds Total Discharges Total Patient Days Inpatient Surgeries Births Inpatient Admissions for Emergency Departments Emergency Department Visits Total Outpatient Visits
Choice Hospital 300 15,279 70,283 4,012 256 4,781 13,342 98,993
From these data, calculate the average length of stay (ALOS) for Choice Hospital.
Now look at the data for Colorado Hospitals at the link provided. Because Choice Hospital is a 300-bed facility, identify the hospitals that have between 200 and 400 licensed beds. Those are the hospitals that you will use for your comparison to Choice Hospital. In your Excel spreadsheet, do the following:
List the hospitals that have 200–400 licensed beds in the first column, with 1 hospital listed per row.
Next, for each of those hospitals, enter the data in separate columns for Total Patient Days and Total Discharges.
In the next column, enter your calculation for ALOS using the data for Total Patient Days and Total Discharges.
At the bottom of the column for ALOS, calculate the mean and standard deviation for the average length of stay for all of the hospitals.
Enter the mean and standard deviation in the cells below in that column, and be sure to identify which value is the mean and which is the standard deviation.
You will submit your Excel spreadsheet along with your 600-800 word summary.
Now that you have the data on ALOS for your comparison hospitals, write 600-800 word summary, not including the title page or reference page, and discuss the following:
Consider the average length of stay for Choice Hospital that you calculated using the data for Choice Hospital. How does that compare to the ALOS on average for the hospitals in Colorado with similar numbers of licensed beds from your calculation?
Identify the range of ALOS for the hospitals, and consider the standard deviation value.
Did you calculate the standard deviation of a sample or of the entire population?
What is the difference?
Explain why you chose the one that you did.
Research the ALOS for the United States, and find a statistic that is within the last 5 years. The ALOS may be an overall average or based on the number of beds.
State the ALOS for the United States that you found in your research, and be sure to cite the reference source.
How does the ALOS for Choice Hospital compare to the national average?
Assignment: Healthcare Statistics & Research
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy
For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours