Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Reliability Of Pressure Ulcer Rates: How Precisely Can We Differentiate Among Hospital Units, And Does The Standard Signal-Noise Reliability Measure Reflect This Precision?, Vincent S. Staggs, Emily Cramer

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Hospital performance reports often include rankings of unit pressure ulcer rates. Differentiating among units on the basis of quality requires reliable measurement. Our objectives were to describe and apply methods for assessing reliability of hospital-acquired pressure ulcer rates and evaluate a standard signal-noise reliability measure as an indicator of precision of differentiation among units. Quarterly pressure ulcer data from 8,199 critical care, step-down, medical, surgical, and medical-surgical nursing units from 1,299 US hospitals were analyzed. Using beta-binomial models, we estimated between-unit variability (signal) and within-unit variability (noise) in annual unit pressure ulcer rates. Signal-noise reliability was computed as the ratio …

Nurse Staffing And Patient Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study On Trend And Seasonality., Jianghua He, Vincent S. Staggs, Sandra Bergquist-Beringer, Nancy Dunton

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

BACKGROUND: Time trends and seasonal patterns have been observed in nurse staffing and nursing-sensitive patient outcomes in recent years. It is unknown whether these changes were associated.

METHODS: Quarterly unit-level nursing data in 2004-2012 were extracted from the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators® (NDNQI®). Units were divided into groups based on patterns of missing data. All variables were aggregated across units within these groups and analyses were conducted at the group level. Patient outcomes included rates of inpatient falls and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. Staffing variables included total nursing hours per patient days (HPPD) and percent of nursing hours provided …