Health Care Management

2.5 End-of-Chapter Practice Problems

1. Suppose that you are the Director of a nurse training program and you want to

interview a random sample of nurses who are scheduled to graduate so that you

can obtain their suggestions about how the program can be improved. Assume

that 63 nurses are scheduled to graduate and that you want to randomly select

15 of these 63 nurses for a personal interview.

(a) Set up a spreadsheet of frame numbers for these nurses with the heading:

FRAME NUMBERS using the Home/Fill commands.

(b) Then, create a separate column to the right of these frame numbers which

duplicates these frame numbers with the title: Duplicate frame numbers.

(c) Then, create a separate column to the right of these duplicate frame numbers

entitled RANDOM NO. and use the ¼RAND() function to assign random numbers to all of the frame numbers in the duplicate frame numbers column,

and change this column format so that three decimal places appear for each

random number.

(d) Sort the duplicate frame numbers and random numbers into a random order.

(e) Print the result so that the spreadsheet fits onto one page.

(f) Circle on your printout the I.D. number of the first 15 nurses that you would

use in your interviews.

(g) Save the file as: RAND9

Important note: Note that everyone who does this problem will generate a different random order of ID numbers since Excel assigns a different random number each time the RAND() command is used. For this reason, the answer to the problem given in this Excel Guide will have a completely different sequence of random numbers from the random sequence that you generate. This is normal and what is to be expected.

2. Suppose that you have been asked to review Medicare claims that your home

health care agency has submitted in the previous month. Assume that your

organization has submitted 114 claims and that you have been asked to audit a

random sample of 10 of these claims to assess the extent to which any billing

errors exist before you do a thorough audit of them.

(a) Set up a spreadsheet of frame numbers for these claims with the heading:

FRAME NO.

(b) Then, create a separate column to the right of these frame numbers which

duplicates these frame numbers with the title: Duplicate frame no.

(c) Then, create a separate column to the right of these duplicate frame numbers

entitled “Random number” and use the ¼RAND() function to assign random numbers to all of the frame numbers in the duplicate frame numbers column.

Then, change this column format so that three decimal places appear for

each random number.

34 2 Random Number Generator

(d) Sort the duplicate frame numbers and random numbers into a random order.

(e) Print the result so that the spreadsheet fits onto one page.

(f) Circle on your printout the I.D. number of the first 10 claims that would be

used in this audit.

(g) Save the file as: RANDOM6

3. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the city of St. Louis, Missouri USA has a

total of 75 long-term-care facilities. Assume that you want to randomly sample

20 of the 75 long-term-care facilities to conduct phone interviews with the

facility Directors to obtain their ideas as to how you could improve your own

organization’s care offered to your guests.

(a) Set up a spreadsheet of frame numbers for these facilities with the heading:

FRAME NUMBERS.

(b) Then, create a separate column to the right of these frame numbers which

duplicates these frame numbers with the title: Duplicate frame numbers

(c) Then, create a separate column to the right of these duplicate frame numbers

entitled “Random number” and use the ¼RAND() function to assign random numbers to all of the frame numbers in the duplicate frame numbers column.

Change this column format so that three decimal places appear for each

random number.

(d) Sort the duplicate frame numbers and random numbers into a random order.

(e) Print the result so that the spreadsheet fits onto one page.

(f) Circle on your printout the I.D. number of the first 20 facilities that you

would select for your phone interviews.

(g) Save the file as: RAND5

2.5 End-of-Chapter Practice Problems 35