title: Balancing cost and precision in hospital accountability sampling.
abstract: The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between sample size and cost using a benefit to cost ratio in the context of hospital accountability measures. We argue that the decision to use larger samples should include an assessment of the marginal benefit in terms of the cost to obtain the samples. Our main conclusion is that without recognizing and balancing the cost of different sampling schemes and developing reasonable cost limits we lose an opportunity at efficiency.
authors.affiliation: Center for Innovation and Transformational Change, UMass Memorial Medical Center, USA. Rocco.Perla2@umassmemorial.org
authors.forename: Rocco J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Perla
authors.forename: Bradford D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Allen
mesh_terms: D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D004469:Economics, Hospital / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D018401:Sample Size