The Importance of Statistical Application and its Interpretation in Health Care

Description

Statistics in health care display a lot on the state of health care systems and services which include everyone that has access to health care, the quality of the care people get, and a variety of data on patients, providers, diagnoses, medications, and patient satisfaction. Conversely, when trying to determine statistical trends, health care providers make proper monitoring of local conditions, compare and contrast them to state, national, and international trends. Health statistics provide empirical data in order to help in the allocation of public and private funds, and also provide help to determine how and where research efforts should be targeted (Casto, 2019).

Healthcare statistics uses strategic planning in order to know if there are changes in current structure of health care organization for example equipment, staffing, facilities, compare past with current performance indicators to determine trends of medical staff, for research and education, to determine performance of ancillary units, for quality improvement, credentialing, and utilization review, for accreditation compliance within The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and other organizations that set standards and for which statistics can verify adherence to criteria, for Healthcare agencies such as World Health Organization (WHO), the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (Casto, 2019).

Long term care facilities use statistics to determine the types of payers their patients have. These statistics are also helpful in demonstrating the types of patients being cared for to the public. Home healthcare provide care for elderly, disabled, and/or convalescent patients in their homes. These agencies keep statistics to determine the types of services used by their patients for example a home health agency would need to know the number of nursing visits, home health aide visits, physical therapy treatments, and patients with various types of equipment such as oxygen machines or other respiratory aids.