Comparing and Monitoring Risk-Adjusted Hospital Performance Measures: A Weighted Estimating Equations Approach.

ABSTRACT: Background. There is a great deal of interest in evaluating hospital performance in order to monitor and improve health care quality. Increasingly, risk-adjusted performance measures are available to the public and statistical approaches for estimating these measures are considered. Some methods in use currently are based on 3-year aggregates of data since a small number of cases may lead to imprecise estimates and make it hard for stakeholders to detect differences across hospitals over time. However, if quality changes over time, a measure based on these data is a biased estimate of present performance. Methods. We present an alternative approach (weighted estimating equations [WEE]) for combining historical data in estimation that regulates the tradeoff between bias and pr

SUBMITTER: Barfoot PC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6125076 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan-Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature