Healthcare: Managing Beyond Exceptions - Analysis using SAS Studio

HEATLHCARE: MANAGING BEYOND EXCEPTIONS
You are the Assistant Director of Surgical Operations for a local hospital.  Over the last several years in your work, you have learned that managing exceptions in healthcare can be a real challenge.  Outliers in data, rare medical errors, or special circumstances can lead to inefficient processes, higher costs, or worse, distract health practitioners from overall patient safety and achieving the best outcomes for patients.  As part of your role you help unit and area managers analyze data and understand the implications of their data.  Use the attached sample data from this quarter’s surgical patient survey to provide the surgical unit managers with some information and insights.[ Overall Satisfaction, Friendliness, Medical Knowledge and Cleanliness (of medical staff and surgical area) are scored by patients at two weeks post-surgery on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high); Would Recommend? And Any complications? variables are scored with 1 = ‘Yes’ and 0=’No’.] Use SAS Studio to complete your analysis and answer the following questions.

1.(9 points) Summary Statistics:
a.Calculate and provide descriptive statistics for all six variables in this data set.  
b.Provide a single comparative boxplot for the quantitative variables.
c.Provide an appropriate data visualization for the qualitative variables.

2.(16 Points) Use the data provided to calculate the discrete probability distributions for Overall Satisfaction, Friendliness. Medical Knowledge, and Cleanliness. Provide those distributions below and calculate the following probabilities:

a.That a patient will be very satisfied (overall satisfaction score of 9 or 10)
b.That a patient would recommend the surgical unit
c.That a patient would recommend the surgical unit given that their surgery had no complications
d.That a patient thought the staff was very knowledgeable (score of 9 or 10)
e.That a patient would recommend the surgical unit given they were very satisfied
f.That a patient would not recommend the surgical unit given they were very unsatisfied

3.(8 points) Provide the probability distribution for the number of very satisfied patients on an average day of 10 surgical patients.  Write a few sentences explaining what type of distribution should be used here and why.

4.(12 points) Major complications after surgery are rare, but they do have a significant impact on your unit budget due to increased costs associated with those complications. Last year, your unit experienced one major surgical complication per month, at a cost of $34,000 per incident.  Provide the probability distribution for the number major surgical complications your unit has each month. Then, calculate the following probabilities:

a.That the unit will have no major surgical complications in any given month
b.That the unit will have at least two major surgical complications in any given month
c.That the unit will have no major surgical complications in any given quarter
d.That the unit will have at least two major surgical complications in any given quarter
e.That you will be able to stay within your $300,000 budget for costs associated with major surgical complications this year.

5.(14 Points) To help give the unit managers an idea of the accuracy of the information provided, calculate 90% confidence intervals for all six variables in the data set. Then, answer the following questions you received from the unit managers:

a.If the sample size is the same for each variable, why isn’t the margin of error the same?
b.About how much would our accuracy increase, if we were able to increase our research budget and double the quarterly sample size?

6.(16 points) The previous quarter’s averages for each variable are shown below.  For which variables can you be 90% confident that this quarter’s average represents a significant increase? [Choose one variable and show all steps of this statistical process needed to answer this question; for all other variables, providing a p-value and accurate conclusion is sufficient.]