Abstract:
Did you know that hospital admissions in Nigeria have been steadily increasing in recent years? The objective of this study was to propose a suitable model for hospital patient admission in Nigeria, with the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, located in Ilorin, Kwara state, serving as a case study. The purpose of this model was to forecast future patient admission numbers and enable adequate planning in the Nigerian healthcare sector. Data from 1999-2015, consisting of 68 quarters, was collected from the hospital’s database. As the data was time-dependent, a Time series analysis and univariate Box and Jenkins methodology were used to create an ARIMA model. The data was plotted over time and became stationary after being differenced once. Different time series models were evaluated and tested for the number of patient admissions. The final model chosen was an ARIMA (0, 1, 1) model, which was also used to forecast quarterly patient admission numbers for the next six years. The results showed that there was a tendency for an increase in patient admission numbers at the hospital.
