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Abstract:
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Peer grouping in hospital profiling aims to create arrays of hospitals for comparison purposes. Hospitals were classified as urban or rural based on the population density at the hospital's location. Specialty hospitals (e.g., pediatric, rehabilitation, behavioral health, nonacute, long-term care, and government) were excluded. Seven measures (i.e., case mix, number of hospital beds, resident-to-bed ratio, transplants, open-heart surgery, trauma centers, and neonatal ICUs) were used to generate an overall point score reflecting the complexity of services, size, and patient mix for each urban hospital. Two measures (i.e., critical access status and number of hospital beds) were used to define the peer group for each rural hospital. Peer grouping hospitals is a critical component of the hospital profiling process.
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