Question

On rare occasions, a medical procedure is performed on the wrong body part of a patient's body or on the wrong patient. These are called wrong-site and wrong-patient mistakes. Such errors occur hundreds of times each year across the United States. The medical community is trying to eliminate these errors but have had difficulty reducing their frequency. In a small percentage of these cases, the patient files a lawsuit against the hospital. Philip Stahel et al. conducted a study on these mistakes and the lawsuits that follow. (1) The data in the file WrongSiteWrongPatient.xlsx (located in the data page of the online text book.) represent the amount (in US dollars) hospitals have been required to pay in wrong-site and wrong-patient lawsuits. Some of the values equal zero, indicating that the hospital won the legal battle.

(1) Source: JAMA Surgery


Find the median amount hospitals had to pay in wrong-site lawsuits.

Answer 1

To find the median amount paid in wrong-site lawsuits, organize the compensation amounts in ascending order and identify the middle value or the average of the two middle values if the number of cases is even, taking into account that some values may be zero. The median highlights tendencies in compensation without being skewed by outlier values.

Step-by-step explanation:

The analysis of the median amount hospitals had to pay in wrong-site lawsuits involves understanding a set of values to determine the middle value when the numbers are ordered from least to greatest.

The procedures for calculating the median begin by organizing the compensation amounts in ascending order. If there is an odd number of values, the median is the middle value. If there is an even number of values, the median is the average of the two middle values.

Since the data set may contain values of zero, indicating cases where the hospital did not have to pay compensation, these will influence the position of the median value. Lawsuits in the healthcare sector expose complex issues around liability and the responsibilities of healthcare providers and equipment manufacturers. Medical errors can be reduced by strict adherence to protocols and continuous improvement of medical procedures and equipment.