Background:

During the flu season, some people, particularly those in vulnerable populations, develop serious complications and end up in the hospital. Hospitals and clinics need additional staff to adequately treat these extra patients.

Goal:

To determine when and where to send additional medical staff, and how many.

Key business questions:

  • When and where do we send additional medical staff? How many?

Data:

Public data on influenza deaths by geography provided by the CDC.

Tools/Skills:

  • Translating business requirements

  • Data cleaning

  • Data integration

  • Data transformation

  • Statistical hypothesis testing

  • Visual analysis

  • Forecasting

  • Storytelling in Tableau

  • Excel

Findings:

Recommendations:

  • Use the Tableau dashboard to get recommended number of nurses to send when and where

  • Can filter results based on number of available nurses, region, state, and month/year

  • Based on the historical flu death data, recommendation is to send 31% of nurses to the South, 28% to the Northeast, 22% to the Mid West, 17% to the West, and 2% to the Mountain Region