Environmental Health Plan Reviews – Time Series Modeling

The Challenge of Managing Environmental Health Plan Reviews

At Cactus Healthcare Resources, we recently had the opportunity to tackle an interesting challenge for an Environmental Health department: managing the unpredictable influx of plan reviews. If you’re unfamiliar, plan reviews are a critical function in Environmental Health, where inspectors assess construction or remodel plans for compliance with health codes and regulations. It’s an important job—but one that also consumes a considerable amount of time and resources. The tricky part? Plan reviews often come in sporadically, or so it seemed, pulling staff from other essential inspections and creating a lot of operational headaches.

Identifying the Need for Predictive Insights

The leadership team had a sense that there was a random, unmanageable nature to when these plan reviews were submitted. With resources stretched thin, there was a growing need to better anticipate the volume of these reviews to avoid overwhelming the team and disrupting other key operations. That’s where we came in.

Building a Forecasting Tool 

Using Meta’s Prophet Time Series model, we built a forecasting tool to predict plan review volumes by month. Prophet is a robust model designed for handling business time series data that exhibits seasonality, trends, and even outliers. By leveraging this model, we could approximate how many plan reviews would likely come in each month, giving the leadership team a data-driven way to plan staffing needs.

Uncovering Hidden Seasonality in Plan Review Volumes

What we found was fascinating—and useful. There was seasonality to these plan reviews, something that hadn’t been fully appreciated before. It turns out that these reviews weren’t as random as initially thought. Instead, certain months consistently saw higher volumes due to external factors like construction cycles or regulatory deadlines. Armed with this insight, we worked with the department to reconfigure staffing. Instead of constantly scrambling to pull people from inspections to handle the influx, we were able to plan more strategically, ensuring the right staff were available at the right times.

Transforming Operations with Data-Driven Predictive Modeling

This kind of predictive modeling is a perfect example of how data-driven approaches can transform seemingly chaotic processes into manageable, efficient workflows. By anticipating volume patterns, we help teams focus on what matters most—whether that’s plan reviews or inspections—and ensure that they’re operating as smoothly as possible.

Our Team Can Help You Discover New Opportunities

If your health system is grappling with similarly unpredictable operational demands, the right analytics solutions might be all you need to bring clarity and control to the situation. Let us know how we can help!

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Brian Jacobson

Brian Jacobson is an industry leader in analytics, data science, and healthcare.