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Biostatistics To Improve the Power of Large Databases
- Barry P. Katz, PhD
- Indiana University School of Medicine; Indianapolis, IN 46202 Note: This article is one of a series of articles comprising an Annals of Internal Medicine supplement entitled “Measuring Quality, Outcomes, and Cost of Care Using Large Databases: The Sixth Regenstrief Conference.” To see a complete list of the articles included in this supplement, please view its Table of Contents.
The three papers included in this section are based on presentations from a session entitled “Biostatistical Issues in Database Research.” This area had the potential to be extremely broad because few issues related to databases do not ultimately have biostatistical implications. However, these articles address the issues that were the major foci of this conference: cost of care, outcomes, and measuring quality.
The cost of medical care is an important issue for society. Interventions, treatments, and even providers are now required to be both effective and cost-effective. However, it may be surprising that the statistical analysis of cost data in the medical literature is inconsistent and often incorrect. The literature review done by Zhou, Melfi, and Hui in their paper, “Methods for Comparison of Cost Data,” makes this abundantly clear. Cost data frequently have three problems that make them difficult to analyze: They are highly skewed, have unequal variances, and frequently have a …
This 100-word excerpt has been provided in the absence of an abstract.
