*A* hospital. Single. I'm certainly not going to defend private equity. But if we're going to do a takedown, let's do it correctly. Cherry picking what is likely an outlier is not doing it correctly.
Not sure where you got the idea that the study was only of a singular hospital, seeing as the study outline details claims for 600k hospitalizations in 51 private-equity hospitals are compared to 4m comparable hospitalizations in 259 non-private-equity hospitals.
Why are you trying to suggest that the 25% increase in hospital acquired complications are limited to a single outlier? The conclusion of the study states that the outcomes across those 51 private-equity acquired hospitals result in a 25.4% increase in hospital acquired complications.
So if the generalized hospital is an outlier, then why are the stats quoted matching the overall average results from the study?
Based on the context of the linked study, it's quite clear that the above quoted paragraph has the following meaning:
"After a [randomly selected] hospital [of the 51 sampled private equity acquired hospitals] was acquired by private equity, admitted Medicare patients had [on average, based on evalutation of those 51 PE acquired hospitals against 259 non PE aquired hospitals,] a 25% increase in hospital-acquired complications, compared with patients admitted before acquisition..."
The purpose of the article is to summarize the study findings. If they were talking about an outlier, they would mention that and use phrasing like "After THE hospital..." where "the" reiterates that it's a specific singular, and not a generalized sample.
Here's the direct text from the linked study as well that medicalxpress paraphrased/reworded:
"After private equity acquisition, Medicare beneficiaries admitted to private equity hospitals experienced a 25.4% increase in hospital-acquired conditions compared with those treated at control hospitals (4.6 [95% CI, 2.0-7.2] additional hospital-acquired conditions per 10 000 hospitalizations, P = .004)."
It seems like you're hung up on medicalxpress's choice of wording for their paraphrasing, which is fine, but 25.4% increase in hospital acquired conditions is NOT an outlier amongst the 51 sampled PE acquired hospitals.
I'm not trying to say anything. I'm simply reading the article and stating the obvious: a cherry picking tactic that sensationalizes an important issue is bull shit.
- It has not place in journalism.
- It has no place on HN.
It's a distraction. We're wasting time debating the merits of a turd, and it is a turd. If we're going to do better than we need to expect better. The study might be sound. The article as present is shite.
The writing of the article was not as precise as it needed to be (I assume for the sake of saving space and words). It was a summary given in lay terms to an audience that could dig deeper into the source research results if they needed further clarification.
"After private equity acquisition, Medicare beneficiaries admitted to private equity hospitals experienced a 25.4% increase in hospital-acquired conditions compared with those treated at control hospitals. ... This increase in hospital-acquired conditions was driven by a 27.3% increase in falls and a 37.7% increase in central line–associated bloodstream infections at private equity hospitals, despite placing 16.2% fewer central lines."
Some things never change. So typical of HN. A comment lacking in critical thinking is added. The punters jump on to further the false narrative. And...the correction to that misguided affair is down voted. Y'all are funny. Ignorant, but funny.
And discover why your comment was downvoted. I apologize I did not leave a comment to explain why I was down voting, I just did not want to say 'look, this person can't read', it's tacky (sorry for still doing it btw)