Using Data Analytics to Improve Nursing Home Quality.

Background: There exists an array of quality performance measures for nursing homes. They can confuse consumers, administrators, and government regulators. Our methodology provides a unified multidimensional evaluation.

A Novel Approach to Evaluating Cardiac Surgery Providers: An Alternative to the RAMR.

Objective: We propose an alternative to the Risk Adjusted Mortality Rate (RAMR), about which we identify four serious concerns. We apply our method to cardiac surgery.

Design: We present a methodology that uses the upper and lower tail probabilities (UTP/LTP) of the binomial distribution to screen for poor/high performing providers.

Performance Measurement Outcomes: An Analysis of Health Care-Associated Infections in New York State.

Background And Objectives: Comparing outcome measures in health care is a relatively common practice. Reports are designed to compare hospital infection rates in an accurate and fair manner. The current methodology used by New York State (NYS) has some limitations and flaws.

Measuring Hospital Performance Using Mortality Rates: An Alternative to the RAMR.

Background: The risk-adjusted mortality rate (RAMR) is used widely by healthcare agencies to evaluate hospital performance. The RAMR is insensitive to case volume and requires a confidence interval for proper interpretation, which results in a hypothesis testing framework. Unfamiliarity with hypothesis testing can lead to erroneous interpretations by the public and other stakeholders.

Alleviating blood shortages in a resource-constrained environment.

Background: The nation devotes considerable resources to the collection, processing, and distribution of blood products. Nonetheless, shortages of virtually every blood component persist. Economic theory suggests that the national blood supply can be increased either by increasing the level of resources used in the collection and production of blood components or by utilizing existing resources more efficiently.