Preparation
Complete the following simulation:
- Vila Health: Presenting Statistical Results for Decision Making. In this simulation, you will evaluate, interpret, and present statistical results to support a health care recommendation.
Instructions
This assessment has two deliverables:
- Prepare an 8–10-slide PowerPoint presentation about the statistical results with recommendations to health system leadership.
- Ensure the slides graphically communicate the findings.
- Ensure your presentation is relevant to and easily understood by everyone in the audience.
- Be sure your written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message
- Include an APA-formatted references slide at the end of the presentation.
- Use Kaltura or similar software to record your presentation. The presentation should last no more than 3 minutes, and it should contain audio of you speaking. You may use alternative programs or technology, provided you can still create a presentation with visuals and recorded audio.
- Before you begin recording, create a script, speaker notes, or a detailed outline that you can refer to as you record. This professional best practice will help you prepare for your presentation and serve to clarify any insufficient or unclear audio in your recording.
- Write a 2–4-page executive summary to accompany the PowerPoint presentation that provides additional context to the results of data analysis.
- Include APA-formatted in-text citations where appropriate.
Submit the recording of your presentation and the executive summary.
Grading Criteria
The numbered assessment instructions outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the Presenting Statistical Results for Decision Making Scoring Guide, so be sure to address each point. You may also want to review the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.
- Evaluate the data collection, measurement, and analysis tools and techniques used in the data analysis.
- Interpret statistical results used in the data analysis.
- Present statistical results used in the data analysis to support a health care recommendation.
- Recommend solution based on results of the data analysis.
- Use media and technology to convey ideas and information.
- Write clearly and concisely, using correct grammar, mechanics, and APA formatting.
Additional Requirements
Your executive summary should meet the following requirements:
- Written communication: Write clearly, accurately, and professionally, incorporating sources appropriately.
- Length: 2–4 pages.
- Resources: Include sources where appropriate within the template, reference list last page.
- APA format: Cite your sources using current APA format.
- Font and font size: Times Roman, 10 point
Vila Health ® Activity
Presenting Statistical Results for Decision Making
Introduction
At any enterprise, statistical results can point the way to better decisions. This is especially true in health care, where trends or changes in patient care or results can have powerful effects on health care organizations — clinical effects, and financial effects. Knowing the facts about trends and changes is crucial to navigating them, which means that in many ways, statistical results are powerful tools.
But they’re less powerful if nobody understands them. More often than not, stakeholders in health care organizations are not well versed in statistics or data analysis. Especially for these stakeholders, it’s critical to make careful choices about which numbers to include — and how to talk about those numbers. Doing so helps you to present statistical results in a way that’s understandable and actionable even for those with less data literacy.
In this activity, you’ll have an opportunity to analyze a health trend at a large urban hospital, and to decide which results of the analysis are most important to communicate to the stakeholders concerned with it.
Your Office
You are an analyst in the Quality Assurance department at St. Anthony Medical Center, a large hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You have an email from David Brooks, the manager of Quality Assurance, in which he explains your next assignment.
From: David Brooks
Subject: HACs
Hello! So I’m aware that you’re relatively new around here, but I’ve got to pull you in on an important project. Here’s the short version, and I can answer questions later if this isn’t enough background.
Since you’re in health care, you must know that hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) are a big deal. Hospitals are designed from the ground up to minimize them, but the fact is that hospitals always have a lot of bugs floating around and that means they’re a constant danger. And while we try to minimize mistakes, health care professionals are human, and sometimes mistakes cause real problems.
The hospital’s board is getting worked up about them again, because we’ve had some high-profile cases where a patient went home and had to be readmitted because of a mistake or an infection they picked up while they were here. They’re worried about PR, of course, but they’re worried about patient outcomes, and — of course — financial reimbursement and penalties, too.
What I need you to do is start working on a presentation about HACs here, specifically as they relate to staffing levels and skill mix. That presentation should explain our recommendations to the board. You’ll want to include some statistics to bolster our case, so take a look at the AHRQ National Scorecard on Hospital-Acquired Conditions and the CMS Hospital-Acquired Conditions Reduction Program. Look at published research about the relationship between HACs and staffing levels, too.
Let’s get this right; this is our chance to get the board to understand that HACs will go down if they do what we recommend.
Go talk to Rick Susskind first; he’s our senior data analyst and he’s already been working on this. He has completed a data analysis on this, and he can explain what the variables are. You’ll have to talk to a few other people too, to get everything you need.
David
From: Rick Suskind
Subject: HAC Data
Hi! I got your message about the HAC question. I’ve attached a spreadsheet of the data analysis we’ve got on that.
Here are a few variables that might be unclear:
HAC_Rate: That’s the number of HACs per 1,000 discharges. You could say it’s the measure for the extent of hospital errors.
Nursing_HPPD: That’s the number of nursing staff hours per patient day. It’s the hospital’s nurse staffing level.
Skill_Mix: That’s obviously about skill mix, but specifically, it’s the percentage of nursing staff hours that are provided by registered nurses, as opposed to other professionals.
ALOS: That stands for average length of stay; it’s the number of inpatient days per hospital discharge. It’s a measure of how efficient the hospital is.
Let me know if you have other questions! Oh, you’ll need to find out how many discharges we have per year. I don’t know that, but Troy Holland, our vice president of patient services, will know.
Attachment: HAC Analysis
Stakeholder Interviews
Troy Holland
Vice President of Patient Services
It’s nice to meet you! Yep, I’ve got those discharge stats. I’m assuming you’re confining your analysis to the last full year? If so, the number of discharges for last year was 10,000. That includes both adult and pediatric discharges.
What I don’t have is information about nurse staffing or costs. For those, you’ll want to talk to Jackie, the chief nursing officer.
Jackie Sandoval
Chief Nursing Officer
Hello. I understand you need some data about our staff costs related to nursing. I’ve got three numbers for you.
Our cost per nurse is $72,000. Now, that’s an average of nurses and registered nurses.
Our cost per registered nurse is $85,000.
Per licensed practical nurse, it’s $52,000. Those numbers include salary, benefits, and overhead.
You had asked about some other costs, but I don’t have those. You’ll want to talk to the CFO, Owen Welch.
Owen Welch
Chief Financial Officer
Hey, I’ve only got a couple of minutes but here’s what you asked about: Our cost per inpatient day is $2,600, and the penalty per HAC is $5,700.
Email Response
It looks like David has followed up with you about the data analysis project you’re working on. Review David’s latest message to you and send a reply with your initial thoughts.
From: David Brooks
Subject: HACs
Thanks for doing all that running around. Now that you’ve got the data analysis you need, I’d like you to do some thinking about what results you’re going to include in the presentation. Remember, it’s the board, not a bunch of number geeks. You’ll want to give them the statistical results they need to make a decision, not just every bit of data we have.
Write down a list of numbers you’re thinking about including in your presentation. We really need to make a data-driven recommendation to the board, and I’d really appreciate your expertise. Thanks!
Reply
Subject: RE: HACs
This message has not been composed yet.
Conclusion
In this activity, you saw that while complicated analysis of data is an important step in guiding decisions at health care organizations, it’s not the only step. Decision makers need to understand how the data were collected, how variables are measured, and whether the analysis tools and techniques were appropriate.
You also gathered necessary data for an analysis of HACs, nurse staffing levels, and skill mix, and did some pre-work on a presentation of the data analysis to the hospital’s board.
Purpose: What is the Purpose of this assignment and data?
-HAC rates and penalties
Nursing hours per patient day (HPPD) compared against and impacted HAC and ALOS
Statistics:
What do the correlations tell you?
What do the descriptive statistics tell you?
What does the Multiple Regression analysis tell you?
Implications: What are the Administrative Implications for reducing HAC and Costs?
Conclusion: What conclusion do you draw from your findings. Remember, this is a management decision making class. At the end of this presentation you must have recommendations in the form of solutions.
Jermaine Byrant
Nicole Johnson
OVER
RATING
YEARS
