What are the dangers involved in making any type of projection with regard to health services utilization, and for how many years out (e.g., 5, 10, 20) should one feel comfortable making a projection? For strategic planning purposes, Mountain View Hospital needed to determine the level of morbidity in its service area population and estimate the demand for health services that these conditions would yield.

Unfortunately, these types of data were not readily available, and the researcher had to develop estimates and projections of health services demand on the basis of modeled data.

To develop an estimate of the demand for health services in a population, the researcher needed two types of information: utilization rates that could be applied to the defined population and population estimates and/or projections. The utilization rates available reflected the population’s age and sex, adjusted for region of the country. The population figures broke down the population into relevant age–sex categories. For each diagnosis-related group, for example, the utilization rate for, say, cardiac catheterization was calculated for each of 19 different age groups and both sexes. These rates were then applied to the respective age–sex groups in the population in question, and the sum of the estimates/projections was calculated.