Forecasting demand of elective surgery at hospital department level to support production planning

Paper in proceeding, 2013

The forecasting process of future demand is a critical process for healthcare organisations adapting to modern production planning in order to allocate scarce resources more effectively and meet patients’ expectations on availability. This paper explores the conditions for, and the requirements of an effective forecasting process for non-emergency patient demand at the hospital department level. Results show that simple and intuitive quantitative forecasting methods are able to predict demand satisfactorily for supporting the master planning process, but should be combined with qualitative judgements to detect rapid changes in demand, e.g. coming from new medical procedures and policies.