What is demand modelling?
Demand modelling uses historic data to better understand past customer behaviour and offer accurate predictions into future service demands. It aims to make optimum use of all relevant data and when done correctly, it reduces risks by enabling evidence-based decision making, leading to a decrease in waiting times and an increase in quality of care.
Demand for services can change consistently throughout the year, so demand modelling should be constantly updated with the most current data. This allows teams to be able to identify the expected changes in demand and plan accordingly.
Why is demand modelling important?
Within local authorities and health and social care organisations demand modelling is crucial in order to remap services to allocate resources with maximum effectiveness. The NHS explain how demand modelling is important in health and social care because it generates a shared understanding between providers and commissioners to help the demand of a trust in many different ways, including:
- Understand what services have a high demand and why waiting lists are growing
- Model the required level of capacity to keep pace with demand
- Understand the gap between the current capacity and the required capacity of a service
- Calculate the maximum waiting lists for each service
- Identify any potential inefficiencies or resource barriers for a service and plan how to maximise resources to overcome them
- Support better decision making around service changes
Population projections for England demonstrate by 2035 14.5 million people will be aged 65 or above, a 49% increase to our population currently. The population of people aged 85 or over will increase to 2.9 million a massive 122% increase from now until 2035.
With the population of the elderly continuing to grow rapidly across the next decade and the continuously reducing budgets, managing the demand and capacity of adult social care in councils is becoming increasingly difficult. The lack of capacity and appropriate skills to analyse data for future planning can limit services and councils will struggle to evidence the level of demand and the impact of it within social services.
Demand modelling isn’t just important for a trust, an organization, or commissioners, it is crucial for patients too and the quality of care they receive. For patients, long waiting times for procedures, treatments, or insufficient access to care services upon a discharge can be detrimental to an individuals’ quality of life and wellbeing.
Everything an individual does or every decision they make can be inhibited due to the condition they are suffering with or the lack of care and support they are receiving. Without a clear strategy for managing performance for productivity and demand, problems in planning services to meet the increasing demographic pressures will occur.
Demand modelling is essential in being prepared for the future cultural changes and the increased demand in social care. Investing both time and money into demand modelling is essential therefore for staff, commissioners and local providers, and patients themselves to improve outcomes and quality of life for individuals.
What are the benefits of demand modelling?
ADASS demonstrates how in 2020/2021 adult social care services overspent by roughly £468 million despite additional funding for covid-19 from the government. Undoubtedly the year 2020 was an unprecedented time for the health and social care industry. New regulations within care settings were changing constantly, with many making the tough decision to not accept any new residents in their home and follow strict lockdown measures to ensure the safety of their current residents. Understanding demand modelling and using it effectively provides many benefits in helping care organsiations run more efficiently including:
- More informed development of processes across individuals’ journeys to establish maximum efficiency and best use of resources
- Effective resource planning allows more focused delivery of care where it is most needed across a pathway
- Better understanding of the financial impact of demand to make sure services are delivered to its full capacity without exceeding the budget
- More efficient planning for the projected cultural changes in the population and the services individuals will require
Research conducted by the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) studied how adult social care demand will change over the next 20 years. The number of older people in local authority funded residential care will need to rise by 41%, from 149,900 in 2018 to 211,000 in 2038 to keep pace with demographic changes. The main reason for this difference is the predicted figure of individuals owning their own homes so they will not be eligible for local authority support.
Changes in economic and social policies impact the health and social care sector significantly altering the demand and the capacity local providers can manage. Changes in policies highlight major uncertainties in future care costs. So, it is crucial local governments and commissioners are prepared and monitor their data and keep up to date with demographic and economic changes constantly, to make sure local care providers deliver and maintain good quality of care and stability to individuals.
What is Access PAMMS Demand Model?
Access PAMMS Demand Model is a versatile market management tool that helps Local Authorities to closely monitor their activity levels to make accurate predictions about future demands. It combines both statistical forecasting techniques and artificial intelligence to analyse previous customer behaviour and predict new trends and patterns to come in the future.
What are the benefits of Access PAMMS Demand Model?
Access PAMMS Demand Model is a highly sophisticated analytic tool which collates a range of datasets to provide easy and accessible visibility of any key information which health and social care organisations require. Access PAMMS Demand Model has a flexible range and allows you to bring a variety of information together including:
- Population and demand – Here datasets from ONS and hospital admissions data can be analysed to understand macro changes affecting demand for care.
- Spend and activity – Here data in commission expenditure can be analysed to identify what you are buying and the rates you are buying them at and benchmark those prices within services locally, regionally, and nationally.
- Capacity and availability - Here data can be analysed so everything about a trust’s capacity and availability can be found in one place to support and meet your local demands and needs as they change.
- Quality and risk – Here you can understand how providers are performing though self-assessments or Council-led assessments to identify anomalies and benchmark against official guidelines and datasets from the CQC.
Is demand modelling the same as demand forecasting?
Demanding forecasting is a central component in ensuring demand and capacity modelling is effective in health and social care organisations. It is clear that there is no one size that fits all when it comes to demand modelling. Some models previously have performed better in more stable conditions compared to others. Sometimes the historic data used is very seasonal, demonstrating not all demands for services are consistent. PAMMS Demand Model offers a range of different-time series forecasting models to test and achieve optimum predictions for each individual demand category.
How can demand modelling manage unexpected events?
Like the whole world, the Covid-19 pandemic impacted many industries in a lot of detrimental ways. A huge event like the pandemic would typically prevent effective forecasting. The changes that occurred in 2020 would normally dramatically disrupt the historic patterns that were used as the basis for forecasts. Access PAMMS Demand Model however, could exist during major events by immediately capturing forecasts prior to the event to make those values the baseline for monitoring the impact as the event took place. It provided the best possible view of what happens during a crisis period and helped care planners establish the new normal as it occurred.
How can I start using demand modelling?
Here at The Access Group we are passionate about helping health and social care organisations improve their efficiency of data analysing for future planning. We want to help organisations improve their outcomes and quality of care. To find out more about how best to understand your data to make more evidence based decisions, watch our data landscape webinar today.
Discover more about how Access PAMMS Demand Model can help your organisation be more time efficient and prepared for the future including when crises could occur, as well as improving individuals’ quality of life by reducing waiting times and having more efficient bed management.