Dear All,
I am hoping someone
can help us with a user query our service is trying to answer.
This is the original question posed to us by a Trust staff member:
“There is a lot of noise at the minute about capacity and demand planning in the Trust and in the NHS more widely (particularly NHS England). One of the core principles of
capacity and demand planning is that you plan to provide for not the average, but the 80% percentile of your demand. For example if your average length of appointment was 30 minutes, you wouldn’t plan your bookings at 30 minutes intervals because half of the
time appointments are going to take longer. Instead you would book them at the 80% percentile, for arguments sake let’s say 40 minutes. That means that 80% of your appointments would take 40 minutes or less and there would be “give” in the system to account
for those that take longer.
This principle is being quoted wherever we hear about capacity and demand planning, but I am not clear on exactly where the evidence for this has come from. Are you able to
find this evidence?”
Is anyone aware of any research/evidence backing up the 80th percentile principle? So far I have not been able to find anything.
Thank you,
Maria
Maria José Simões
Assistant Librarian
Library & Information Services
Business Intelligence
Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust
Second Floor, Stockdale House, Headingley Office Park, Victoria Road, Leeds LS6 1PF
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 0113 843 3593
www.leedslibraries.nhs.uk
- Leeds Libraries for Health website
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