Oak Hollow Medical Evaluation Center

Oak Hollow Medical Evaluation Center Case Study
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Name and Number
Professor’s Name
Date
Oak Hollow Medical Evaluation Center Case Study
Question 1
The tables show that there has been an upward trend in the annual expense. Besides, table 2.3 exhibits varying demand for the different services across the different months. Therefore, simple exponential smoothing (SES) would be an appropriate forecasting technique for Oak Hollow Medical Evaluation Center. SES is suitable whenever there is no seasonal pattern or specific trend. The forecasting technique would assume that the monthly patient demand would be more or less the same as in the recent past. SES is advantageous because it is simple to learn and apply. After all, the analyst needs to only consider small volumes of data. Moreover, SES provides more importance to the recent observations. On the other hand, the forecasting technique may be disadvantageous because of the lag between the actual demand and the forecast demand (Ostertagova & Ostertag, 2012). This is because the method does not consider the random variation factors. Secondly, SES cannot effectively handle trends because it is primarily used to predict in the short term. Thus, cyclical and seasonal variations could make the forecasts inaccurate. Nevertheless, Mr. Abel needs to provide additional information like reasons for decreasing demand for particular services. Also, he needs to explain how competitive services influence the expense and demand trends.
Question 2
The patients, expenses, and staff forecasts are done based on alpha 0.1.
Patient Forecast
Year

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

Physical

390

468

509

490

582




390

398

409

417

433

S&H

102

124

180

148

204




102

104.2

111.78

115.402

124.2618

Psych

168

312

376

386

437