> After a hospital
*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.
*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.
Y'all read those stats to be for all. Instead it was one extreme outlier and y'all's biases fell for it.
This is why we can't have nice things. Too much assuming, not enough intentional "listening".
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.
- 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.
"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."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2813379?gu...
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)
If I wanted to speak to the whole study I would have. However, the paragraph pulled specifically says "*a* hospital*.
Now who did the skimming?? FFS