Neil Pettinger

Imagine an NHS manager presented with two ‘patient flow’ case studies. The first is a patient who spent three hours in the emergency department (ED) before being admitted; the second is a patient who spent twelve hours in the ED before being admitted.
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Does it help to use 'flow moments' to describe patient flow? Each grey dot is a moment when a patient was transferred from the Acute Medical Unit (AMU) to Medicine of the Elderly (MoE). The black dots are the means of each column's grey dots. The red line is the regression line.

Here's a thought.
It worries me that too many healthcare data analysts lack curiosity*. But what worries me more is that there might be an inverse relationship between technical ability (which we recruit for) and curiosity (which we don't).
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Data analysts say: "I wish managers were more data literate!" Analysts think numbers on their own can convey the message. But numbers are just the supporting evidence for written and spoken narratives. If I were a manager, I'd be saying: "I wish data analysts were more literate!"

We don't often see the +/-1, +/-2 and +/-3 sigma (σ) zones explicitly shown on control charts. Trying to work out if lines are enough or whether grey shading works better.