How to Calculate Healthcare Statistics

Health care statistics provide medical professionals, government officials and members of the public with indicators about the general health of the nation. Statistics help physicians and medical researchers identify effective treatments. In addition, statistics also help health care providers measure the quality of their service delivery. Health care systems collect a wide variety of data related to patient care, system performance and other matters. Despite the enormous volume of data collected, calculating many health care statistics requires only an understanding of basic mathematics.

Instructions

General Health Statistics

• 1

  Calculate the fertility rate for a given population. The Pennsylvania Department of Health describes two fertility rate measures: general and total. The general rate refers to the number of live births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. To calculate the general fertility rate for your county, for example, divide the number of live births by the county's population of females aged 15 to 44. Then multiply the result by 1,000 to obtain the number of live births per 1,000 females. The total fertility rate is much more detailed, representing the sum of birth rates for women in specific age brackets, such as 15 to19, 20 to 24, and so on.

• 2

  Compute the premature mortality rate for a population. Pennsylvania Department of Health defines the premature mortality rate as the number of deaths among people younger than age 75 per 100,000 residents. The department reports that 75 is close to the average U.S. life expectancy. To calculate the premature mortality rate for your city or county, record the number of deaths to residents younger than 75 by age group brackets, such as 0 to 5 years, 6 to10 years and so on. Then list the population of the area being studied for each age group. Divide deaths by population in each age group to obtain age-specific mortality rates.

• 3

  Standardize your age-specific mortality rates by recording the standard population for each age group. The Pennsylvania Department of Health used the U.S. standard million population by age groups for the year 2000. Then multiply the age-specific death rates by the standard population to obtain indices of expected deaths. Then sum the total for an index of expected deaths, as well as a total standard population. Finally, divide the index by the total standard population and multiply the result by 100,000 to obtain a premature mortality rate.

Health Care System Measures

• 4

  Measure the utilization of health care services by computing hospital occupancy rates, defined as the number of inpatient days divided by the number of available hospital beds, multiplied by 100. The inpatient care days measure is the total of the inpatient census for an entire year, while the available beds is the number of hospital beds available each day for the year. The Pennsylvania Department of Health cautions that available beds must be calculated to account for any changes in the number of beds available for the year.

• 5

  Calculate the average length of stays in hospitals and other inpatient facilities. The Pennsylvania Department of Health prescribes two methods for doing this. The first takes the total number of days spent in the hospital by patients who were discharged during the time frame being examined and divides it by the total number of patient discharges. The second approach divides the sum of each daily inpatient census for the time period under consideration and divides it by the total number of hospital admissions. Pennsylvania points out that the second method does not consider long-term hospitalizations because it counts only days of care and admissions for a particular time period.

• 6

  Calculate staffing levels in a health care facility by dividing the number of patient encounters in a month's time by the number of full-time staff members. The American Health Information Management Association defines patient encounters as any contact between a patient and a physician or other health care service provider.