Article Text
Abstract
When the degree of variation between healthcare organisations or geographical regions is quantified, there is often a failure to account for the role of chance, which can lead to an overestimation of the true variation. Mixed-effects models account for the role of chance and estimate the true/underlying variation between organisations or regions. In this paper, we explore how a random intercept model can be applied to rate or proportion indicators and how to interpret the estimated variance parameter.
- healthcare quality improvement
- performance measures
- quality measurement
- statistics
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Footnotes
Contributors GAA conceived the paper. GAA and MNE jointly wrote the paper. Both GAA and MNE are statisticians with expertise in profiling of healthcare institutions. MNE leads the CMS Medicare CAHPS® (Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems) Analysis project. GAA has advised NHS England on use of the Cancer Patient Experience data and Public Health England on the interpretation of variation.
Funding GAA was partly supported in this work by funding from Public Health England
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.