In an acute care facility, a long length of stay affects which measure of central tendency?

In the context of an acute care facility, when considering the effect of a long length of stay on measures of central tendency, the mean is particularly sensitive to extreme values. The mean is calculated by adding all the lengths of stay together and dividing by the number of stays. If there are a few cases with significantly longer stays compared to others, those outliers can pull the mean upward, resulting in a distorted representation of the average length of stay.

On the other hand, the median, which represents the middle value when all lengths of stay are ordered, is less influenced by extreme values. It will only change if the long lengths of stay are numerous enough to affect the middle of the dataset. The mode, being the value that appears most frequently, remains unaffected unless there is a significant number of occurrences of the long lengths. Variance measures the spread of data points around the mean but does not directly represent a measure of central tendency.

Thus, a long length of stay primarily affects the mean, making it an important measure to consider in this scenario.