Felder Community Hospital is a 600-bed facility that serves a large metropolitan area. Senior management requires all departments to implement quarterly training for their staff members. As the director of the HIM department, you are responsible for quarterly training of the HIM supervisors on statistical data that affect patient outcomes. As part of the upcoming training, you plan to train your management staff on how to analyze morbidity statistics for the months of May, June, and July. The attached “Statistics for Felder Community Hospital” provides the statistics for the hospital for this three-month period. You plan to explain how statistical data can be used to identify trends and possibly improve patient outcomes. You also plan to provide staff training on the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) Code of Ethics and how its principles apply specifically to data integrity and the use of statistical patient data for organizational research.
A. Discuss health information data measurement by doing the following:
1. Explain the differences between discrete and continuous data in health information research.
2. Provide one example from healthcare of each of the following scales of measurement:
• nominal
• ordinal
• interval
• ratio
B. Analyze the Felder Community Hospital’s statistics using the “Statistics for Felder Community Hospital,” “Formulas,” and “Felder Community Hospital LOS Regression Analysis” supporting documents by doing the following:
1. Calculate the average length of stay (ALOS) of discharged patients for the months of May, June, and July.
2. Calculate the patient death rate for the months of May, June, and July.
3. Calculate the average daily inpatient census for the months of May, June, and July.
4. Calculate the percentage of occupancy for the months of May, June, and July.
5. Calculate the gross autopsy rate for the months of May, June, and July.
6. Create a table showing your findings for each statistical calculation performed in parts B1–B5.
7. Describe the relationship between two of the calculated data points from parts B1–B5.
8. Explain how the data calculated in parts B1–B5 can be used by Felder Community Hospital.
9. Explain how the attached “Felder Community Hospital LOS Regression Analysis” could be used to identify a relationship between LOS and total charges at Felder Community Hospital.
C. Explain how statistical data can be used to improve healthcare delivery.
D. Explain how two specific principles from the AHIMA Code of Ethics would guide professional conduct for data integrity.
E. Discuss how Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations should be applied to the data analysis performed in part B.
F. Acknowledge sources, using APA-formatted in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.