Suppose that you want to display the number of deaths due to breast cancer for the years 1990
through 1999. What graphic technique would you choose?

Line graph

Suppose that you want to display the average length of stay by gender and service for the month of
August. What graphic technique would you choose?

Bar chart

If you are interested in displaying the parts of a whole in graphic form, what graphic technique
would you use?

Pie chart

In a frequency distribution, the lowest value is 5 and the highest value is 20. What is the range?

15

I just realized that we may be misleading administration with the data we provided them.
What might we have done?

Failed to adjust the baseline

AHRQ

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

What rates would adequately describe the observed number of deaths in a community?

20/100,000 in January 2000
2/1,000 in January 2000

What rate describes the number of new cases of an illness for a specific time period?

Incidence rate

What term is used to describe the number of inpatients present at the census- taking time each
day plus the number of inpatients who were both admitted and discharged after the census-taking time
the previous day?

Daily inpatient census

What unit of measure is used to indicate the services received by one inpatient in a 24-hour
period?

Inpatient service day

What rate is used to compare the number of inpatient deaths to the total number of inpatient
deaths and discharges?

Gross hospital death rate

Suppose a patient who underwent orthopedic surgery acquired Klebsiella pneumonia while
hospitalized. How could this illness be described?

As a postoperative infection
As a hospital-acquired infection
As a community acquired infection

What term is used to describe the number of calendar days that a patient is hospitalized?

Length of stay

What rate is used to indicate the percentage of the hospital’s beds occupied by inpatients for a
given time period?

Total length of stay
Inpatient bed occupancy rate

What rate compares the number of autopsies performed on hospital inpatients to the total
number of inpatient deaths for the same period of time?

Gross autopsy rate

Suppose that five patients stayed in the hospital for a total of 27 days. Which term would be used
to describe the result of the calculation 27 ÷ 5?

Average length of stay

The probability of death among diagnosed cases of a specific disease is termed:

case fatality rate

What data elements are considered protected under the HIPAA Privacy Rule?

Patient telephone number
Patient name
Medical record number
Zip code

FTE

Full-time equivalent employee

Employee compensation

Annual compensation =

hours X per hour X % benefits

Productivity:

Amount of work completed X number or work days per year

(5 workdays per week X 52 weeks per year)

Unit labor costs:

Compensation / productivity

Completed work = total work output – defective work

Labor productivity = completed work / hours worked to produce total work output

(Work output / total hours worked)

Staffing levels:

Patient encounters / productivity = number of FTE’s needed

(Inpatients per day / records coded per day)

FTE’s example:

Minutes X records = total minutes

¯

Total minutes / 60 minutes (hours) = total hours

¯

Total hours / productive hours = FTE’s needed

Operational budget

Budgeted – actual = variance

(Variance x 100) / budgeted = % over or under budget

Capital budget (high dollar assets)

Total cost of project / Annual incremental cash flow

(Annual incremental cash flow refers to the savings that a development realizes from the project)

Return on investment (ROI)

(Average annual incremental cash flow X 100) / Total cost of the project

Case Mix index

(The average relative weight of all cases treated at a given facility or by a given physician. Case mix is always reported with four decimal points)

Sum of the weights of MSDRG’s for patients discharged during a given period / total number of patients discharged

Calculating rates

(Number of time something happened X 100) / number of times something could have happened

Purchase shelves

inches per shelf × shelves per unit = linear filing inches per unit

records × 1 inch per record = inches of records to be filed

(inches of records needed) / inches per unit = filing units

New file folders needed for next year

admissions (year currently) + additional admissions/year = total admissions next year

total admissions X % readmission rate = readmissions next year

total admissions - readmissions = new file folders needed for next year

Budget allocation for storage space

inpatients × inch per record = total inpatient inches

ER patients × inch per record = total ER inches

Inpatient inches + ER inches = total inches of filing space per year

total inches × $ per filing inch = $ budget allocation for storage space