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A Software Program to Calculate Goodman and Kruskal's Gamma: A Method to Monitor Surgical-Site Infection Rates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2016

Thomas E. Wasser
Thomas E. Wasser*
Affiliation:
Health Studies Department, Lehigh Valley Hospital, Allentown, Pennsylvania
*
Health Studies Department, Moyer House, Lehigh Valley Hospital, 227 N 17th St, Allentown, PA 18104; e-mail, Thomas.Wasser@lvh.com
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Abstract

Several studies have described a need for a valid statistical methodology to facilitate interhospital and intrahospital infection rates for their operative procedures. Physician awareness of postoperative surgical-site infection rates has been demonstrated as an effective means to reduce infection rates in both high- and low-risk surgical patients. This article presents a new software program that allows for simple data entry and provides results including the gamma statistic, sample size, variance, standard error, and Z value and P value of the gamma result. This software also provides a data interpretation table, allowing infectious disease department physicians or staff to determine if a significant relation exists between operative procedure infection rates and patient risk factors.

Type
Information Management
Information
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology , Volume 19 , Issue 11 , November 1998 , pp. 869 - 871
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1998

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References

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