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Ann Thorac Surg 2008;86:348. doi:10.1016/j.athoracsur.2007.10.028
© 2008 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
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Correspondence

In the Context of Performance Monitoring, the Caterpillar Plot Should Be Mothballed in Favor of the Funnel Plot

Mohammed A. Mohammed, PhD, Jonathan J. Deeks, PhD

Department of Public Health & Epidemiology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom

(Email: m.a.mohammed@bham.ac.uk).

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

To the Editor:

Grunkemeier & Wu's [1] recent contribution to the Statistician's page included a plot of risk-adjusted mortality in six hospitals after percutaneous coronary intervention. Although the authors did not explicitly focus on the plot, we believe the plot merits comment (Fig 1).


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  		Fig 1. For each hospital the ratio of observed/expected deaths is shown as a dot, with vertical bars representing exact 95% confidence intervals based on the Poisson distribution. (Data from Reference 1.)

 
The purpose of this plot is to identify where differences in performance between hospitals may be explicable by chance. Although this type of plot, colloquially known as the caterpillar plot, is widely used in performance monitoring, there are some important conceptual issues that make the . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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Gary L. Grunkemeier and YingXing Wu
Ann. Thorac. Surg. 2008 86: 349. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]



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G. L. Grunkemeier and Y. Wu
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Ann. Thorac. Surg., July 1, 2008; 86(1): 349 - 349.
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