MAT543
Case Study 1: Forecasting
Rosalind Sidney MAT543—Quantitative Math for
Health Services
Strayer University
Forecasting
There are various approaches used for forecasting. Forecasting is the method guesses of
the future based on past and recent information. Healthcare organizations forecasting is
predicting health outcomes or disease episodes and alerting individuals of what may happen in
the future. It is a form of preventive medicine or preventive care that involves public health
preparation, and its objective is facilitating healthcare service plans in the public. Some
forecasting approaches are average change extrapolation, average percent change extrapolation,
confidence interval extrapolation, moving average forecasting, and exponential smoothing
forecasting. The following forecasting techniques can be utilized to forecast the amount of clinic
visits in a healthcare facility.
This technique consists of the analysis of the month-to-month change that happens in the
data. Calculating month-to-month changes in whole terms is imperative instead of the definite
amount of the change. To get the forecast for the selected month, you need to calculate the
average of the month-to-month change. The formula that is needed is: Forecast month (FM) =
Average of the data + (Midpoint x Average Change). In using the formula, the previous changes
from the prior month must be calculated after all the number of visits has been found. In order to
find the change month to month, subtract February’s visits from January and continue the
process for the remainder of the year.
To use this equation first we have to find the change from the previous month and find
the total for visits to health services. I first found the total of all the visits in 2008 by adding all
the visits up from January to October. That total came to be 343. I then found the changes from
month to month. To find the change from January to February I subtracted January visits from
Case Study 1: Forecasting
Rosalind Sidney MAT543—Quantitative Math for
Health Services
Strayer University
Forecasting
There are various approaches used for forecasting. Forecasting is the method guesses of
the future based on past and recent information. Healthcare organizations forecasting is
predicting health outcomes or disease episodes and alerting individuals of what may happen in
the future. It is a form of preventive medicine or preventive care that involves public health
preparation, and its objective is facilitating healthcare service plans in the public. Some
forecasting approaches are average change extrapolation, average percent change extrapolation,
confidence interval extrapolation, moving average forecasting, and exponential smoothing
forecasting. The following forecasting techniques can be utilized to forecast the amount of clinic
visits in a healthcare facility.
This technique consists of the analysis of the month-to-month change that happens in the
data. Calculating month-to-month changes in whole terms is imperative instead of the definite
amount of the change. To get the forecast for the selected month, you need to calculate the
average of the month-to-month change. The formula that is needed is: Forecast month (FM) =
Average of the data + (Midpoint x Average Change). In using the formula, the previous changes
from the prior month must be calculated after all the number of visits has been found. In order to
find the change month to month, subtract February’s visits from January and continue the
process for the remainder of the year.
To use this equation first we have to find the change from the previous month and find
the total for visits to health services. I first found the total of all the visits in 2008 by adding all
the visits up from January to October. That total came to be 343. I then found the changes from
month to month. To find the change from January to February I subtracted January visits from
