Critical Reasoning

Source: Veritas Prep

Patient Advocacy Association: In a recent ranking of state hospitals, Hospital A received the lowest overall grade based on a patient mortality rate that was nearly twice that of the top-ranked hospital. Mortality rates in five departments (cardiology, oncology, surgery, neurology, and neonatology) were used in the comparison. Clearly, Hospital A provides the lowest quality of care state-wide in these departments.


One reason that the strength of the Patient Advocacy Association's argument cannot be evaluated is that

(A) The argument makes no mention of deaths of patients seen by multiple departments.

(B) The Patient Advocacy Association has a reputation as a biased third party that does not always objectively weigh the evidence regarding quality of care.

(C) The Patient Advocacy Association has only cited the mortality rate in five departments of the hospitals.

(D) The Patient Advocacy Association has not included data about the underlying health and severity of illness of the individuals served by each of the hospitals.

(E) The Patient Advocacy Association has not included recent trends in mortality rates by hospital.

Experts: only Veritas Prep experts, please!

D for obvious reasons

D for me also.

d is the answer

C for me.

My take is C.

Because the Association derives the strength for the argument from mortality rate.

DanaJ wrote:Source: Veritas Prep

Patient Advocacy Association: In a recent ranking of state hospitals, Hospital A received the lowest overall grade based on a patient mortality rate that was nearly twice that of the top-ranked hospital. Mortality rates in five departments (cardiology, oncology, surgery, neurology, and neonatology) were used in the comparison. Clearly, Hospital A provides the lowest quality of care state-wide in these departments.


One reason that the strength of the Patient Advocacy Association's argument cannot be evaluated is that

(A) The argument makes no mention of deaths of patients seen by multiple departments.

(B) The Patient Advocacy Association has a reputation as a biased third party that does not always objectively weigh the evidence regarding quality of care.

(C) The Patient Advocacy Association has only cited the mortality rate in five departments of the hospitals.

(D) The Patient Advocacy Association has not included data about the underlying health and severity of illness of the individuals served by each of the hospitals.

(E) The Patient Advocacy Association has not included recent trends in mortality rates by hospital.

Experts: only Veritas Prep experts, please!

D for me too

OA is D.

Let me address answer choice C before I give the official explanation for D. Answer choice C seems very possible and I think the argument is designed to send you in that direction. However, remember the phrase "Conclusion is King." Before you select an answer make sure that you have paid attention to each detail of the conclusion. In this case, the conclusion says, " Clearly, Hospital A provides the lowest quality of care state-wide in these departments." The key detail here is "in these departments."

So that is the message to take away from this question -- each detail in the conclusion matters!! If "in these departments" were not there C would be a viable answer.

Solution: Answer (D) is correct because a higher mortality rate is to be expected for a hospital whose patients arrive at the hospital already in poor health. Without correcting for such discrepancies, it is not possible to know whether the mortality rate of various hospitals is a good indicator of quality of care. Answer (A) is incorrect because those patients seen by multiple departments should not be relevant to the strength of the argument. Answer (B) is incorrect because the Association's reputation in itself does not impact the strength of this particular argument. Answer (C) is incorrect because, since the Association makes clear the limited scope of departments under consideration, the lack of other departments in the ranking is not an issue. Answer (E) is incorrect because the Association is making a conclusion only about a single point in time, so the trends over time need not be considered.

just wondering, what question type would this be classified as, weaken?

Yes. Very true. You can classify this as a weaken question. We are looking for the reason why it cannot be evaluated so we are looking for what is missing in the argument. It is basically asking for the flaw in the argument.

D for me

Prephrase an answer. We have a statistics problem. Clearly there is no baseline from which to measure these stats. Bogus! Must be D.

My take option D

IMO D