Measure Categories

In Ursa Studio there are two primary categories of measures – population and performance.

Population measures

Population measures are measurements of the quantity (count) of a body of persons or events that have a quality or characteristic in common. For example, the count of active plan members across a certain span of time.

Population measures enable users to explore the properties associated with a group of entities or events. These measures are also useful for quantifying numerator and denominator observations associated with performance measures. While population measures do not have a native numerator, Analytics Portal’s Measure Expression feature enables users to plot any numeric field associated with a population measure as a numerator, which creates a proper rate measure.

Count of Active Plan Members

Performance measures

Performance measures are measurements of the rate - an amount, ratio, or degree - of something measured per unit of something else. For example, the rate of blood stream infections occurring after seven days of inpatient care.

A performance measure is a numerical expression resulting from a numerator-denominator relationship that represents a real-life circumstance. The measure’s denominator defines the scope of a performance opportunity (e.g., hospital inpatient stays lasting longer than 7 days). The measure’s numerator defines the realization of performance within that opportunity (e.g., the inpatient stays lasting longer than 7 days where the patient developed a blood stream infection).

Among hospital admissions with a LOS > 7 days, the percentage of those where the patient developed a blood stream infection (BSI)