Measure Workshop Objects and Stacks

Objects and Stacks

In the Measure Workshop, measures are organized into stacks consisting of multiple objects, which represent the different components that make up a measure. This allows for flexibility and customization. The Measure Workshop leftbar is an essential tool for managing these structures, offering users a way to navigate and modify their measures. Through the leftbar, users can access and manage their stacks and objects to create and edit measures in an organized manner.

Measures can be broken down into two dimensions: temporal structure and measure type. Temporal structure includes interval, entity, event, and static. Measure type can be a rate measure, registry, or count measure, which are determined by numerators and denominators. Rate measures have both a numerator and a denominator, while registries only have a denominator and count measures only have a numerator. The choice of measure type dictates how the stacks operate in Measure Workshop.

Imagine a healthcare organization that wants to analyze the rate of hospital readmissions within 30 days of discharge. In this case, the numerator would represent the number of readmissions within 30 days, and the denominator would represent the total number of discharged patients. To calculate this rate, the organization needs to create a numerator stack containing objects related to readmissions and a denominator stack containing objects related to discharges.

Working with Objects

Measure Workshop's left navigation enables users to create numerator and denominator stacks, which can include multiple objects. The objects within each stack get an alias, like DB for denominator base object and DL1 for the first linked object of the numerator.

Objects can be joined together to form subpopulations, a process similar to a SQL join. A stack, such as the denominator, can consist of multiple subpopulations joined together. During multipopulation setup, the fields of various subpopulations must be aligned if they are intended to represent the same output column.

Users can add a new object to a measure, selecting from any object visible to measures. Once chosen, the object's name is displayed at the top of the screen. Users can then drill down into the object, view the object comment (which may contain useful information about its purpose or grain size), or unset or swap out the backing object. Swapping maintains existing fields and restrictions, while unsetting removes them. When replacing a backing object, users need to map previous fields to the appropriate new object to resolve flagged errors.

Users can create derived fields and apply restrictions at various levels, such as numerator-denominator restrictions, upstack restrictions, and object restrictions. Upstack restrictions determine how objects are joined together within the stacks, while object restrictions can filter data based on specific conditions.