27,321 research outputs found
The Quality of Health Care Providers
Obtaining better information on the quality of health care providers is one of the most pressing issues in health policy today. In this paper we (1) develop a new method for measuring quality of care that overcomes the key limitations of available quality measures, and (2) apply this method to estimating the quality of hospital care for elderly patients with heart disease. Our approach optimally combines information from all available current and past quality indicators in order to more accurately estimate and forecast each provider's quality level. For patients with heart disease, the method is able to predict and forecast differences in patient outcomes across hospitals remarkably well - far better than existing methods. Our approach also provides an empirical basis for choosing among potential quality indicators. In particular, we find that differences across hospitals in short-term mortality rates following a heart attack, adjusted for patient demographics, are excellent indicators of quality of care: They vary dramatically across hospitals, are persistent over time, are highly correlated with alternative quality indicators, and are highly correlated with mortality rates that adjust more extensively for patient severity. Thus, comparing quality of care across providers may be far more feasible than many now believe.
Vector Reachability Problem in
The decision problems on matrices were intensively studied for many decades
as matrix products play an essential role in the representation of various
computational processes. However, many computational problems for matrix
semigroups are inherently difficult to solve even for problems in low
dimensions and most matrix semigroup problems become undecidable in general
starting from dimension three or four.
This paper solves two open problems about the decidability of the vector
reachability problem over a finitely generated semigroup of matrices from
and the point to point reachability (over rational
numbers) for fractional linear transformations, where associated matrices are
from . The approach to solving reachability problems
is based on the characterization of reachability paths between points which is
followed by the translation of numerical problems on matrices into
computational and combinatorial problems on words and formal languages. We also
give a geometric interpretation of reachability paths and extend the
decidability results to matrix products represented by arbitrary labelled
directed graphs. Finally, we will use this technique to prove that a special
case of the scalar reachability problem is decidable
Robust regularized singular value decomposition with application to mortality data
We develop a robust regularized singular value decomposition (RobRSVD) method
for analyzing two-way functional data. The research is motivated by the
application of modeling human mortality as a smooth two-way function of age
group and year. The RobRSVD is formulated as a penalized loss minimization
problem where a robust loss function is used to measure the reconstruction
error of a low-rank matrix approximation of the data, and an appropriately
defined two-way roughness penalty function is used to ensure smoothness along
each of the two functional domains. By viewing the minimization problem as two
conditional regularized robust regressions, we develop a fast iterative
reweighted least squares algorithm to implement the method. Our implementation
naturally incorporates missing values. Furthermore, our formulation allows
rigorous derivation of leave-one-row/column-out cross-validation and
generalized cross-validation criteria, which enable computationally efficient
data-driven penalty parameter selection. The advantages of the new robust
method over nonrobust ones are shown via extensive simulation studies and the
mortality rate application.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AOAS649 the Annals of
Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Endogenous Fishing Mortalities: a State-Space Bioeconomic Model
A methodology that endogenously determines catchability functions that link fi shing mortality with
contemporaneous stock abundance is presented. We consider a stochastic age-structured model for
a fishery composed by a number of fi shing units (fleets, vessels or métiers) that optimally select
the level of fishing effort to be applied considering total mortalities as given. The introduction of
a balance constrain which guarantees that total mortality is equal to the sum of individual fi shing
mortalities optimally selected, enables total fishing mortality to be determined as a combination
of contemporaneous abundance and stochastic processes affecting the fishery. In this way, future
abundance can be projected as a dynamic system that depends on contemporaneous abundance.
The model is generic and can be applied to several issues of fisheries management. In particular, we
illustrate how to apply the methodology to assess the floating band target management regime for
controlling fishing mortalities which is inspired in the new multi-annual plans. Our results support
this management regime for the Mediterranean demersal fishery in Northern Spain.This work was funded by the European Commission as part of the MINOUW project (H2020-SFS-2014-2, number 634495) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (ECO2016-78819-R, AEI/FEDER, UE
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