Forecasting Practices in Healthcare Industry

Forecasting is particularly important to dietary people in the health care industry because of the perishable nature of their products. A questionnaire was designed to examine forecasting practices in the dietary departments of health care organizations. From a total of 200 questionnaires mailed to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of business forecasting 1991-04, Vol.10 (1), p.23
Main Authors: Reyna, Sandy, Kwong, K Kern, Li, Cheng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Forecasting
Forecasting techniques
Health care industry
Questionnaires
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Summary:Forecasting is particularly important to dietary people in the health care industry because of the perishable nature of their products. A questionnaire was designed to examine forecasting practices in the dietary departments of health care organizations. From a total of 200 questionnaires mailed to people in food service departments of acute care hospitals and skilled nursing facilities in California, 34 responses were received. Items that are often forecasted by a dietary department include aggregate demand for food and food-related labor cost. Everyone uses gut feelings based on past experience to prepare forecasts. In addition, many of them use formal methods, such as the population-based methods and moving averages. Planning is clearly the most common use of forecasts. Wherever forecasting is used, every director of dietary departments participates in the forecasting process. Very few respondents revealed dissatisfaction with the forecasting techniques they use. On-the-job training was regarded as the most important way of learning forecasting techniques.
ISSN:1930-126X