Question

According to Casto (2018), “Descriptive statistics summarize the utility, efficacy and costs of medical goods and services. Increasingly, health care organizations employ statistical analysis to measure their performance outcomes.” Based on the reading please select one of the following topics:

Health Care Utilization

Resource Allocation

Needs Assessment

Quality Improvement

Product Development

Research the topic in the Library and locate one article to review. Share the descriptive statistics from the article using your own words. Include the statistical analysis that was performed and a rationale as to why that particular test was used. Share one visual representation the data in your response (e.g., pie charts, histograms, bar charts, etc.). Using this article ( Casto, R. (2018). Why Are Statistics Important in the Healthcare Field? )

Answer 1

A Descriptive analysis of medical service utilization of veterans living in Ontario : a retrospective healthcare study using administrative health care data [BMC Health Services Research Journal,pubmed ID: 27488736]

Background of the study

This is the first study to provide longitudinal analysis of Candian Veteran Health care utilization in the public health system of Ontario .Health care utilization by veterans following release  are different from those of general population because of occupational conditions, requirements and injuries

Methods

study design: A retrospective cohort study, uses Ontario's Provincal Health care data to study the demographics and health care utilization of canadian armed forces and veterans living in Ontario.

Sample inclusion criteria: Veterans released between Januvary !st 1990- March 31st 2013

Databases at the Institute of clinical evaluative services were linked by a unique identifier to study non-mental health related hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and phsician visits.

Satistical Analysis: Over-all and age stratified descriptive staistics were calculated in 5-year intervals following thre date of release

Results

Cohort comprised of 23, 818 CAF or RCMP veterans. Following release from service

1. 82.6% (95% CI 82.1-83.1) saw their family phsician atleat once over first 5 years
2. 60.7% (95% CI 60.0-61.3) visit non-mental health specialist once over first 5 years
3. 9.9% (95% CI 9.5-10.3) were hospitalized for non-mental health problems
4. 40.8% (95% CI 40.2-41.5) visited emergency department in the same time period
5. Stratifying health service utilization by age of veteran at entry into provincal health care system revelaed significant difference in service use and intensity

The proportion of Veterans in ontario accessing a family phsician, specialist, the emergency department and requiring hospitalization for non-mental health purposes in the 20 years following entry into the Ontario Health care system is represented on a bar chart:

Without staistics quantitative data would be a chaotic mass of numbers. Statistical procedures enable the researcher to organize , interpret and communicate numeric information. Stastics are either descriptive or inferential.

Descriptive statisitcs are used to synthesise and describe data. For eg: averages and percentages. When such indexes are calculated from a population, they are called parameters. A descriptive index from a sample is a statistic. Most scientific questions are about parameters, so researchers calculate statistic to estimate them and use inferential staistics to make inferences about the population

From the article (Casto, R 2008) helps to  identify statistical trends and trails, health care providers can monitor local conditions and compare them at state, national and international levels. Health statistics provide empirical data in allocation of public and private funds and help to determine how research efforts should be focussed.