Choosing a coverage probability for forecasting the incidence of cancer.

Loddon Mallee Integrated Cancer Service plays a key role in planning the delivery of cancer services in the Loddon Mallee Region of Victoria, Australia. Such planning relies on the accuracy of forecasting the incidence of cancer. Perhaps more importantly is the need to reflect the uncertainty of these forecasts, which is usually carried out through prediction intervals.

Planning for transition care.

The Australian Government introduced the National Transition Care Program in the 2004-2005 Federal Budget. This program is designed to assist elderly patients who have completed a stay in hospital to move from the hospital to their homes or other suitable accommodation. In planning for transition care services, managers are faced with the question, "How many places should be allocated to transition care in our facility?" This case study offers an approach to this question based on queueing theory.

Forecasting emergency department presentations.

Objective: To forecast the number of patients who will present each month at the emergency department of a hospital in regional Victoria.

Methods: The data on which the forecasts are based are the number of presentations in the emergency department for each month from 2000 to 2005. The statistical forecasting methods used are exponential smoothing and Box-Jenkins methods as implemented in the software package SPSS version 14.