Center to Advance Palliative Care

Those CAPC #s are more illustrative than predictive. Lynn Spragens, the CAPC consultant/guru, has suggested that a more predictive but less intuitive approach (based on info she's gleaned from many a program) is:
a new program might expect 0.5-1.0 new referrals per staffed hospital bed; a 3-year-old program may expect 1.0-1.5 referrals per staffed bed; and a 5-year-plus-old program might expect 2.0 and above referrals per staffed bed. Like I said, not intuitive, but it seems to work pretty well. From your posting, it looks like you can expect approx ~160 new referrals in your first year, with 187 staffed beds, so you're right on target according to this predictor. Lynn's numbers have been confirmed by many programs (including our own here at VCU and the article published in JPSM in May 2009 by Radwany et al. -- with 640 beds they began with 289 consults, had 687 in their third year, and 1300 in their fifth year).
- Brian Cassel, VCU PCLC