In a hospital, demand is the number of patients who come through the door to receive a specific service. So in the case of the Dialysis Unit, for instance, demand for the service is the number of patients who will come in to receive dialysis. As I mentioned before, because we are talking about something that will happen in the future, we can’t specify an exact figure for demand, so we have to project or approximate the number of patients we think will use each of the proposed services.

I'm going to get in touch with some of the doctors at Woodland Ridge hosptial, specifically the ones that will be referring patients to the new services. I'm going to see if they can give us some input on the number of patients they will be referring to these services.

Your Job
While I'm working on that I'd like you to spend some time figuring out where the experts projections will come from. Your job is to create a plan for projecting the demand for each of the four proposals. Specifically, your plan should include:

• The type of information you will need in order to project demand.


• How you plan to gather this information. You should ask yourself:
  
  
  • What sources could I use?
  
  
  • Who could I talk to? What questions would I need to ask those people?
  
  

As you work, keep in mind that the type of information you’ll need to project demand could be different for each of the proposed projects.

I’d like you to conduct some research on projection. Looking at some Internet resources on the process of projecting demand for a service will help you determine what information you will need.

Once you have put together a plan for projecting the demand for each proposed new service, I’d like to review it. You can present your plan any way that you like, but make sure that it is clear and well organized. It should be easy for me to look at the plan you submit and determine exactly what you are going to do.

I look forward to reviewing your work.

Thanks,

Abby

Abigail Vincent
Sr. Consultant
WJL Consulting