ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of forecasting as a tool for analysis of the health care sector during the period of 1970-1980. It examines critically five components of the health system for which forecasts were made: national health expenditures, capital needs, human resources supply and requirements, technological innovation, and organizational change within the delivery system. The increasing centrality of the federal government in the financing of health care since the mid-1960s has stimulated efforts to forecast national health expenditures by a wide range of interested agencies including the Social Security Administration, the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Health Care Finance Administration. Federal support for construction of acute care hospitals began with the passage of the Hill-Burton legislation in 1946. In 1972 the forecasting methodology was redesigned to reflect a desired hospital occupancy rate of 85 percent rather than 80 percent.
