Forecasts of the health and functional status of the elderly (and oldest old) population would be useful in designing and pricing LTC insurance products, assuring the long term financial stability of capitated health care provider organizations (like Social HMOs) and in the planning of residential facilities which integrate home health, nursing, and institutional care services (i.e., """"""""life care"""""""" communities). In addition, the latter organizations need to identify desirable markets. Drug and equipment manufacturers also need estimates of market size. The production of such estimates and forecasts though important for a wide range of insurance and health care provider businesses, represents a considerable investment of time and resources to develop the forecasting and local area estimation technologies and the necessary data resources. Despite their value it is unlikely that even large corporations would independently undertake such an investment of both time and money. Thus, we feel (and have demonstrated) that there is a commercial market for a specialized private enterprise to provide detailed forecasts of the health and functional status of the elderly. In Phase I, we identified major data resources, forecasting methodologies and associated forecasting software that could be used to provide """"""""state-of-the-art"""""""" forecasts of the health and functional status of the elderly populations. In Phase II, we provide a detailed workplan to show how these resources can be converted into a commercially marketable package of forecasting services and information products.
