Summary statistics of estimates of level-specific variation by level, indicator type and disease category
| VPC estimates, n | Median VPC estimate (IQR)* | |
| Level | ||
| Hospital | 144 | 3% (1%–9%) |
| Physician | 54 | 1% (1%–3%) |
| Pathologist | 2 | 4,9%; 19%† |
| Ward | 1 | 5.3%† |
| Nursing unit | 1 | 5%† |
| Country | 1 | <5%† |
| Region | 2 | 3%; 0.1%† |
| Indicator type‡ | ||
| Processes | 10 | 17.4% (10.8%–33.5%) |
| Intermediate clinical outcomes | 81 | 3.0% (1.6%–9.0%) |
| Final clinical outcomes | 35 | 1.4% (0.6%–4.2%) |
| Patient-reported outcomes | 3 | 1.0% (0.9%–1.5%) |
| Patient-reported experiences | 15 | 5.5% (2.6%–10.4%) |
| Major disease category‡ | ||
| Vascular disease | 33 | 2.8% (0.4%–7.0%) |
| Hip/knee surgery | 25 | 2.7% (1.7%–12.1%) |
| General inpatient population | 37 | 3.6% (1.6%–10.0%) |
| Infections | 12 | 1.7% (0.7%–11.6%) |
| Malignancies | 18 | 3.0% (1.0%–9.0%) |
| Other | 29 | 4.0% (1.5%–5.5%) |
*All VPCs were calculated as a percentage of total variation in the indicator analysed. For studies reporting a range in VPC instead of an exact estimate, the middle of the range was used in calculating the median.
†For the levels pathologist, ward, nursing unit, country and region not the median but the estimated VPCs themselves are shown.
‡Only hospital-level VPC estimates were categorised by indicator type and major disease category.
VPC, variance partition coefficient.