Arrowhead Regional medical center Colton is a 456 beds facility that is serving San Bernardino, Riverside and the mountain area, statistics is an essential component in the delivery of quality care. It is used in collecting an appropriate quantitative data, also use to assess the efficiency of treatment and interventions. As a center that participates in the Medicare program, statistical data is used to maintain and improve quality of patient care which is part of the hospital’s mission statement. Due to the statistics data being used, the stroke center earned certification by the Healthcare facilities Association (HFAP) as a level 1 stroke center, by demonstrating the highest national standard to provide the best care available for patient suffering from stroke.
Statistics data showed that they met more than 40 HFAP standards of covering, diagnosis, treating, rehabilitating patient and providing community education and follow-ups. Statistics data are used to keep tracks of events like falls, preventing reoccurrences, employee satisfaction of their jobs, staffing, patient satisfaction, and length of stay.
An example of a numerical data that is used at Arrowhead regional medical center is the press Ganey. The press Ganey will mail letters randomly to selected discharged patients and ask them questions about quality of care that they received during their hospital stay, their complaints or things that they think should have been down differently . They also look at patients visit by location; gender and different area that care were given.
The information received from this discharged patients will be presented to different areas (floors) in meetings to the staff, managers, and the governing board. This information will be used to improve care that is being provided. An example of statistical analysis that is use at Arrowhead regional is the use of tracking log to monitor patient who are at risk for pressure ulcer. Nurses use specific flow sheet to monitor if there is any pressure ulcer. Was it acquired before or after being admitted to the facility? The tracking log is presented to the management team. The team will look at the result and means to prevent or how to provide quality care.
The use of data at the four level of measurement:
1. Nominal; usually represent by bar/contingency table, sometimes called qualitative observation or categorical observation. It uses any variety of symbols to represent categories of nominal variable. Example, color of hair, the use of 1 and 2 to represent gender, 1representing female and 2 representing male. 2. Ordinal: It is ranking-ordered categories, ranging from low to high, shortest to longest, fastest to slowest.it involves classification of variable, example, the pain scale levels of 0-10, 0 being no pain and 10 being the highest level of pain. 3. Interval: it is level of measurement with data that can be ordered.
This data does not have a starting point. Fahrenheit and Celsius are both example of interval level of measurement to calculate temperature. 4. Ratio: this the highest level of measurement, it possess all the feature of interval in addition to zero value. Due to presence of zero, it is possible to compare the ratio of measurement. Example, comparison such as “twice” are meaningful at ratio level.
The advantages of the accurate interpretation of data at Arrowhead Regional center is that accurate data will help in doing researches, planning , implementing initiatives that could reduce healthcare disparities . It will prevent waste of resources; prevent harm/injuries to patients, improve quality of cares provided. As a Medicare participating program, accurate data will be used to develop, eliminate wasteful spending, and monitor healthcare spending. Finally, it is used to budget, administrative cost, utilization and supplies.