How the dodgy data was found at Canberra Hospital

Holy Hell – the data wasnt only manipulated – it was POORLY manipulated.

I think people are missing a really big elephant in the room. If it was their practice to change wait times what else do they change?

Years ago I had to insist the doctors in charge of my mother’s care put back details of a procedure ordered by one of their team, while my mother was in emergency, into mum’s hospital medical records.

The ONLY reason I knew it was missing from her medical files when she went upstairs to a ward was because other doctors in that “team” then tried to tell me it had never happened. And since the procedure seemed to have contributed to mum going into kidney failure it was pretty important it should be recorded. The head of the treating team asked the “doctor” involved to apologise to my mother and myself for the “clerical error” he’d made.

If I hadn’t have been with mum 24/7 I would never have known what had happened.

Skidbladnir said :

We’ve been doing exactly the kind of data manipulation a situation like this requires since at least the 1930s, and today you can find an automated function to generate usable values to achieve a central median in about fifteen minutes.

Would they be normally distributed though? Bounded below by zero wait time, but as we all know, there is no upper bound to how long you can wait at the ED — at least it seems like that sometimes.

NB: My ED wait times (0m, 45m, 90m) have been completely acceptable considering the seriousness of my injuries (burst appendix, lacerated forehead – bone visible, deep cut to a finger), and the care I have received has been top notch. Thanks for that.

Skidbladnir said :

(But doing it well enough, for long enough, and in a way that outlasts your employment, to fool both auditors and statisticians at AIHW would be a considerable feat)

Indeed. A chap I knew working on meteorological data developed some methods for checking data quality for long time series. One particular station on the NSW south coast would always pop up as being aberrant. When he investigated it turned out the temperature measurements had been contracted out to a local business person after the Post Office stopped doing the measurements. They decided the tourist traffic might be increased if their town was a little warmer.

(For those inclined to conspiracy theories, no this does not invalidate observed global warming)

Why in that case would you fake it so badly?

Compliant Greens and Labor have made sure that it makes no difference if anyone found out or not.’

Just think, every single bit of information the public gets fed by the current government could be as corrupt as this and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Absolutely nothing at all.

Come now, it’s not all that bad.

You’re forgetting this initiative:
http://www.cmd.act.gov.au/open_government

Hahahaha! 🙂

Why in that case would you fake it so badly?

Compliant Greens and Labor have made sure that it makes no difference if anyone found out or not.’

Just think, every single bit of information the public gets fed by the current government could be as corrupt as this and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Absolutely nothing at all.

And yet they’ll all probably be re-elected in Oct.

Interesting article in the crimes from the other Kate (who was shafted over the Bruce Stadium Affair). Seems there was a hint more integrity in the assembly back then with the minister taking responsiblity for their portfolio.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/assembly-gone-soft-carnell-20120821-24l1e.html

Oh how I wish the Greens would have the guts to actually stand for something, instead of being a pseudo-faction of the ALP.

F***ing amateurs.

We’ve been doing exactly the kind of data manipulation a situation like this requires since at least the 1930s, and today you can find an automated function to generate usable values to achieve a central median in about fifteen minutes.

(But doing it well enough, for long enough, and in a way that outlasts your employment, to fool both auditors and statisticians at AIHW would be a considerable feat)

lol, just imagine the figures on their tax returns.

Has anyone asked Mssrs Martin, Ghirardello, Hall and Thompson for comment?

But having said that, is it possible that all these individuals were uninventive enough to use the fairly precise 30, 60 and 240 minute cutoffs when manipulating the data? That is, of course, if they were involved at all.

harvyk1 said :

Why in that case would you fake it so badly?

Because you’re hopeless.

You can purchase programs for around the $300 mark and takes about 2 hours to set up properly which can generate good high quality fake data which when done right would be nigh impossible to tell apart from the real thing. (I personally use such a program for stress testing databases, need to have pretty realistic data in there otherwise it is difficult to spot problems).

Hell you could probably find a freeware or open source program which would at least put in semi believable data and only take 5 minutes to set up.

Why in that case would you fake it so badly?