Study Population

HPR Technical Report - Study Population

Inclusion Criteria

The study population for the 1998 Hospital Performance Report includes useable records from all Pennsylvania general acute care and specialty acute care hospital discharges in 1998. These data are categorized into one of the fifteen DRGs included in the report. Because of the importance of discharge status, especially in the mortality analysis of the report, only records with a valid discharge status were retained. It should be noted, however, that a small number of records (less than 0.1 percent) were removed from the analysis due to invalid discharge status.

Hospital Exclusions from Public Report

In 1998 there were 194 general acute care facilities and seven specialty acute care facilities in Pennsylvania, for a total population of 201 facilities. However, the study population includes data from 200 facilities because one general acute care hospital failed to report any data for calendar year 1998.

The number of cases included in any single type of analysis in the 1998 Report varies because of unreported data or incomplete data submitted by the 200 acute care facilities or differing exclusion criteria. Although data and analysis specific to non-compliant facilities are not included in the Public Report, their valid records have been retained in the statistical analyses for in-hospital mortality, length of stay, and charges. Valid records for these hospitals are captured in the Technical Report tables. Hospitals are excluded in the 1998 report for the following reasons:

missing UB-92 data for one or more quarters during 1998 and not granted an exception to reporting – three hospitals
one hospital that is missing a substantial portion of UB-92 data for one quarter of 1998>
data submitted with more than 15 percent missing ASG scores for the 15 selected DRGs – twenty-four hospitals

Additional Hospital Exclusions

There were six hospitals that were excluded from the 1998 Report for reasons other than non-compliance. Although data and analysis specific to these facilities are not included in the public report, their complete records have been retained in the statistical analyses for in-hospital mortality, length of stay, and charges.

The exclusion categories include:

one specialty acute care hospital that reported a low volume of cases for the selected DRGs
four children's hospitals; since the majority of their patients are under the age of 18, comparisons between these special acute care hospitals and general acute care hospitals are not parallel.
one facility that as of fourth quarter 1998 was no longer an acute care facility.

Partial Exclusions

Data and/or analyses were appropriately suppressed at the DRG level for those facilities which had too small a patient count (fewer than 5 cases in the mortality analysis) to be included in the analysis for practical reasons. There are 56 hospitals in this group of exclusions. However, due to small sample size, no further analysis is displayed on those data.