Data Description

A large metropolitan hospital is evaluating the effectiveness of a new computer system to enter patient information. Each department in the hospital has different information to enter into the computer system, so the staff plan on conducting studies in all hospital departments. The hospital's quality officer wants to achieve a specific margin of error, so the research team needs to know what sample sizes are needed. On the other hand, the research team also wants to look at the margin of error that is possible given specific sample sizes; if possible, the quality control officer only wants to collect a certain amount of data to stay within budget.

Their research questions are:

·    What is the mean length time to enter patient information for all departments with a margin of error of 30 seconds? Based on a small pilot study, the planning value standard deviation is 120 seconds. The budget allows for 50 samples.

·    What is the variability in time to enter patient information in the cardiac department with a margin of error of 15 seconds? Based on a small pilot study, the planning value standard deviation is 90 seconds. The budget allows for 80 -120 samples.

·    What proportion of patient reports produced in the obstetrics department contain missing information with a margin of error of 0.08? Based on a small pilot study, the planning value proportion is 0.20. The budget allows for 100 samples.

·    What is the daily rate of errors in all patient reports with a margin of error of 0.04? Based on a small pilot study, the planning value rate is 0.15. The budget allows for 300 samples.

·    What is the daily mean occurrence of errors in patient reports produced in the emergency room with a margin of error of 0.03? Based on a small pilot study, the planning value mean is 0.10. The budget allows for 175 samples.