Table 1. Numerical Example of direct and indirect standardization.

	Hospital A		Hospital B
	Urgent	Non-urgent	Urgent	Non-urgent
Expected mortality rate	6%	2%	6%	2%
Observed mortality rate	3%	4%	3%	4%
Case-mix	1000	4000	4000	1000
Indirect standardization	136		61
Direct standardization	100		100

Although both hospitals have the same observed mortality hospital A performs worse than hospital B when the mortality rate is adjusted via the indirect standardization method.