Pictorial outcome measures for the hospital care of older patients-a suggested toolkit

摘要

Objective: to propose three pictorial methods of presenting hospital outcome data, suitable for use in older patients entering medical specialties (including rehabilitation). Patients: 224 patients (mean age 80.6 years, 56/100 female, 75/100 emergencies) admitted to a department of medicine for The elderly. Presentational techniques: the methods we propose for the presentation of outcome data are (i) place of discharge, Using a two-dimensional diagram; (ii) 'survival' analyses, but using discharge from hospital rather than death as the Endpoint; and (iii) 'phase diagrams', a novle method of charting the progress of a cohort of patients. To illustrate these Methods, the relationship between admission case-mix (with patients put into tertiles on the basis of their Barthel Index score) and outcome is shown graphically.