Since the demand for health services is the key driver for virtually all of a health care organisation's financial and operational activities, it is imperative that health care managers invest the time and effort to develop appropriate and accessible forecasting models for their facility's services. In this article, we analyse and forecast the demand for radiology services at a large, tertiary hospital in Florida. We demonstrate that a comprehensive and accurate forecasting model can be constructed using well-known statistical techniques. We then use our model to illustrate how to provide decision support for radiology managers with respect to department staffing. The methodology we present is not limited to radiology services and we advocate for more routine and widespread use of demand forecasting throughout the health care delivery system.
Keywords: Radiology services; demand forecasting; forecast error; multiple regression analysis; personnel staffing.