Comments for Garth Koyle

Comment on American Hospitals Receive Low Patient Satisfaction (HCAHPS) Scores by Garth

Garth — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:53:13 +0000

I didn’t just take a simple average of the top box percents. Those percents are the ratio of respondents’ answers to each question and it wouldn’t make sense to average those numbers.

These HCAHPS scores were derived by first assigning each possible survey response a numerical value. The following are the values assigned to the possible responses:

Patients who gave a rating of 6 or lower (low) = 6 points
Patients who gave a rating of 7 or 8 (medium) = 8 points
Patients who gave a rating of 9 or 10 (high) = 10 points
Always = 10 points
Usually = 5 points
Sometimes or Never = 0 points
Yes (Yes Definitely) = 10 points
Yes (Yes Probably) = 5 points
No = 0 points

The percentage of responses (given in the HCAHPS data) for each possible answer is then multiplied by the point value/multiple per answer. The answer scores are then summed per question. That summed value is then multiplied by 10 to put the score on a common 100 point (100%) scale.

Here’s an example:
Survey Question: How often did staff explain about medicines before giving them to patients?

Responses, Point Value Multiple * Answer Percentage:
Staff always explained, 10* 57% = 5.7
Staff usually explained, 5*22% = 1.1
Staff sometimes or never explained, 0 * 22% = 0
Sum = 5.7 + 1.1 + 0.0 = 6.8

Multiply that question sum by 10 to get to the 100 point (percentage) scale: 6.8*10 = 68.0

Each question is then summed and an average is given per state.

You’ll notice that a lot of the answers to questions have ranges (e.g. 0-6), but I give the state the benefit of receiving a 6. I mention this because the average response for that question is probably not the full 6 points, so these state averages might even be a little lower than reported.

I did a little more research and found that Sarasota Memorial’s average is 79.07. That average is above the Florida average (75.40) but below the national average (80.23).

Comment on American Hospitals Receive Low Patient Satisfaction (HCAHPS) Scores by Shawn Halls

Shawn Halls — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:14:00 +0000

Can you please share how you got these averages? when I average the top box percents for April 2008-March 2009 for the 10 areas mentioned above, I dont get the same national (80.2) or Florida average (75.4). What am I missing?

thanks…shawn
twitter: @smhcs

Comment on Utah Innovative Company Index – Feb by Utah ski resort

Utah ski resort — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:08:57 +0000

It’d be nice to appear in your list))

Comment on Utah Innovative Company Index – Feb by Bryan Phelps

Bryan Phelps — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:32:40 +0000

Hey Garth – Great list! Very interesting results, it will be fun to track. Did you consider adding OrangeSoda.com to your list? We’re a quickly growing Internet Marketing company out of Orem.

Comment on Innovative Utah Company Index – March by csnowden

csnowden — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:19:55 +0000

Hey Garth, that is quite an impressive list of local companies. We have much to be proud of here in the Utah business community.

I wanted to throw another success story into the hat; a local company out of Orem called ListPipe specializes in SEO copywriting for bloggers. The ListPipe.com site is currently enjoying a relatively high Alexa rank at 330,801.

ListPipe.com has been around for about a year and is starting to focus on partnerships and growth. Hopefully they can be another shining star among the successful Utah companies you have listed.

Great work on this list!

Comment on Using Google Trends to Find People Looking for Jobs, and Utah Jobs by Leslie

Leslie — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:35:50 +0000

I heard on the radio today that Utah has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. Yet you showed that there is quite a lot of searching for Utah jobs. So, this must be indicative of turnover – that is, EMPLOYED people are searching for jobs, not UNEMPLOYED people. This could be a sign of employee dissatisfaction with their jobs. And search the unemployment rate is so low in Utah, people can easily quit a current job and find a new one. Utah’s job market is now an “Employee’s Market” in the same way that the housing market is a “Buyer’s Market”. It’s the classic forces of supply v. demand.