Predicting certain factors in an organization can be a challenging responsibility. Forecasting helps hospital management to predict these factors with the help of past references and therefore enable them to initiate every necessary action. Forecasting is one of the first tools used in nursing and healthcare financing to help provide better care of citizens. This article briefly tries to describe some of the details about forecasting and how to improve the quality of healthcare to patients.
What items can be forecast?
Forecasting in healthcare, just like in other fields, focuses on the prediction of uncertain events. This includes measurements such as predicting the population health outcome after a certain duration of time like measuring the life expectancy and health expectancies of the given population. Another item that can be forecast with respect to nursing and healthcare is the course of an ailment in an individual or still in a population.
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What are the basic steps in forecasting?
Forecasting has got six basic steps. These include problem identification, collection of information, preliminary analysis, choosing the forecasting model, analysis of data and, verification of model performance.
Should forecasting use annual or monthly data? Why?
In healthcare financing, the intensity of need for a forecast determines the horizon upon which the healthcare forecasting is conducted. Annual data would be preferred in this case since it creates a larger pool of variances in the data used hence it is easier to obtain more accurate results.
To what extent is forecasting a mechanical process?
Hospital management is advised to consider forecasting as an art and not as a science. The results obtained in are therefore not at all times perfect. The application of forecasting also depends on the demand of each organization and is thus designed to suit these varying demands. This makes forecasting a mechanical process.
Are forecasting techniques sufficiently sophisticated so that there is no need to attempt to verify their accuracy? Explain
Since some external factors that affect the accuracy of a forecast are unpredictable and uncontrollable, there is always the need to verify the accuracy of the forecasting models used. Different organizations would also work best with different forecasting model and thus the level of sophistication of the model chosen vary with different organizations. Therefore there is the need to verify their accuracy before deciding to apply a forecasting model.
What is the ideal profile of a nurse-entrepreneur?
Nursing entrepreneurship requires a set of hard work, strong business skills as well as creativity. However other qualifications are required which include, a degree in nursing, nursing experience and a suitable area of specialty, basic knowledge, and skills in business, good communication skills and ability to take risks. The nurse should be able to work independently.
Developing a business plan requires understanding the “business.” What does this mean?
Understanding the business demonstrates the ability of an entrepreneur to analyze and familiarize with the systems, processes, and data required in a business plan. This is essential in understanding the requirements, priorities, and benefits of that particular business.
Discuss the factors that should be included in a sensitivity analysis of a new home health agency
Certain factors including the years of Medicare certification are included in the sensitivity analysis of new home health agency. The type of ownership, the distance between the patients” homes and agency’s office and the number of ZIP codes served by an agency in a county are other factors included in the analysis.
