Another question. If LL was a very experienced nurse, was there statistically an increase in neonatal mortality in the hospitals where she worked previously, as it was observed in Chester?
And did the indices of neonatal mortality go drastically down after LL left Chester?
Because the numbers of the babies LL is accused of killing should represent a definite surplus in any given time. They won’t change the statistics only if the hospital is both very big and tremendously subpar.
Let me put it so, if the expected annual mortality in NICU is 7 babies per year, then 7 plus is statistically significant. If the hospital is so poor (or maybe, so big and bad) that annual NICU mortality is 100 babies per annum, then 107 would be not significant. In the later case, malfeasance would be very difficult to prove, unless something is registered by the camera.
As I was posting it, I thought that theoretically, there might be a mix of two factors as well. Imagine LL being the killer, but, say, she killed 3 kids out of 7, and the other 4 were victims of routinely bad medical practice. Difficult…
This article sheds some light on mortality rates in NICU, and the reasons for it. Just some food for thoughts. It is almost as if two statistical models have to be made, one, the regular expected death in Chester NICU (given admissions, number of live births, gestational weight, etc), and the other model, all of these, plus additional variable, LL.
Newborn babies in need of critical medical attention are normally admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). These infants tend to be preterm, have low birth weight, and/or have serious medical conditions. Neonatal survival varies, but progress ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov