TABLE 11-5
a Physician and President of a Tampa Health

question 64

Multiple Choice

TABLE 11-5
A physician and president of a Tampa Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) are attempting to show the benefits of managed health care to an insurance company. The physician believes that certain types of doctors are more cost-effective than others. One theory is that Primary Specialty is an important factor in measuring the cost-effectiveness of physicians. To investigate this, the president obtained independent random samples of 20 HMO physicians from each of 4 primary specialties - General Practice (GP) , Internal Medicine (IM) , Pediatrics (PED) , and Family Physicians (FP) - and recorded the total charges per member per month for each. A second factor which the president believes influences total charges per member per month is whether the doctor is a foreign or USA medical school graduate. The president theorizes that foreign graduates will have higher mean charges than USA graduates. To investigate this, the president also collected data on 20 foreign medical school graduates in each of the 4 primary specialty types described above. So information on charges for 40 doctors (20 foreign and 20 USA medical school graduates) was obtained for each of the 4 specialties. The results for the ANOVA are summarized in the following table.
$$\begin{array} { l r r r r r } \text { Source } & \text { df } & { \text { SS } } & \text { MS } & { F } & P R > F \\\hline \text { Specialty } & 3 & 22,855 & 7,618 & 60.94 & 0.0001 \\\text { Med school } & 1 & 105 & 105 & 0.84 & 0.6744 \\\text { Interaction } & 3 & 890 & 297 & 2.38 & 0.1348 \\\text { Error } & 152 & 18,950 & & & \\\text { Total } & 159 & 42,800 & & & \\\hline\end{array}$$
-Referring to Table 11-5, what was the total number of doctors included in the study?

• A) 160
• B) 159
• C) 20
• D) 40

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Definitions:

Blood pH

The measure of acidity or alkalinity of the blood, normally maintained within a tightly regulated range of about 7.35 to 7.45.

pH Range

A scale that measures how acidic or basic a substance is, ranging from 0 (most acidic) to 14 (most basic).

Acidosis

Acidosis is a condition in which there is too much acid in the body's fluids, leading to a lower than normal pH level in the blood.

Alkalosis

Alkalosis is a condition characterized by a higher-than-normal pH level in the blood, indicating an excess of bicarbonate or a loss of acids.