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Data Sources

Summary Measures

This section provides detail on the summary measures that make up the trend data analysis in the Highlights section of this report. The accompanying summary lists all the measures, the data years used to analyze "trends" and the source of that data. These data served as the basis for the summaries that were made in the Highlights section. This includes the following analyses:

Distribution of percent improvement by measure - This summary measure is presented in Figure H1 and its accompanying bullets. This analysis was completed by analyzing the difference in the estimate for a given measure between the data year reported in the 2003 NHQR and the estimate for the same measure for the data year reported in the 2004 NHQR. This approach was also used for Figure H2, where the improvement or deterioration in measures by the dimension of quality is presented.

Median change in quality - This analysis was done by taking the median change in the estimates for all the measures across the entire measure set between the data year reported in the 2003 NHQR and the data year reported in the 2004 NHQR.

Median change in quality by care setting. This analysis was performed using the same process as that used for the overall median change in quality. Labels for the care setting are also presented.

The attached table presents a listing of all the measures for which multiple years of data are available. The first column presents the measure number from the 2004 NHQR Measure List. The second column presents the name of the measure. The third column presents the estimate for the measure from the latest data year available presented in the 2004 NHQR. The fourth column presents the year for this latest data year estimate. The fifth column presents the estimate for the earliest year data available as presented in the 2003 NHQR. The sixth column presents the data year for this earliest year estimate. The seventh column notes where the change between the earliest year and the latest year are significant at p<.05 level.

 
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