The last 12 referral batches arrived at 27, 37, 36, 18, 24, 39, 32, 47, 30, 32, 31, and 52 day intervals.

The average is 34 days, the median is 32 days, and we see 32 twice. The shortest interval is 18 days and the longest is 52. But, the 47 was hopefully an anomaly due to H1N1, and the 52 day interval seems to have been because no one was in the CCAA offices to sign referrals for the week before their holiday. Meaning it is possible we shouldn’t be using those numbers in our figures. Or, maybe we should.

Which means I’m going to figure three possible scenarios this month.

Scenario One:
This scenario takes no exceptions into account. It’s based purely on the numbers of the last 12 referral batches.

Scenario Two:
This scenario looks at the months that were likely off due to various circumstances and pulls them out of the equations:

Scenario Three:
This scenario takes us one step beyond the second scenario. This scenario assumes that they finished matching this batch of referrals back in September and put them on a desk somewhere awaiting signatures, and then proceeded with the next batch.

It has been theorized that the CCAA is worried about H1N1 and they are holding back as much as possible until they see how things are going to play out once flu season swings into full bloom. If that is the case, then I would not expect scenario three to be a possibility.

That’s not to say the third scenario isn’t going to happen. If I felt sure it wouldn’t happen then I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all, much less done the math for it. The CCAA has done this in the past (long interval followed by a short one), so it is a possibility. It depends on the true reasons for holding them, basically. If they truly didn’t send them out because they were waiting on signatures then scenario three is pretty likely. But, if they held them because they’ve been told to slow things down until we get an idea of what the flu is going to do, then scenario three is not very likely at all.

Oh, there is one other thing I have to mention. I won’t call this scenario four because I don’t give it any weight, but the most likely arrival date for those who believe referrals always arrive on or near the first of the month would be November 1. Again, I’ve never given that theory any weight, but if I don’t mention it people will squawk.

I’ve had a few people ask what we call the referrals that just arrived. I always refer to a batch by the date referrals began arriving – the day phone calls are first reported is the defining factor for me. So for my purposes, this is called the October batch. If we get another batch in late October then we’ll have the early October referrals and the late October referrals. It’s true that these are the referrals that were matched in September, but it just gets too complicated trying to have all of the arguments around what to call a batch when you start down that path. I’m all for keeping it simple, and labeling them by the date phone calls are first made has so far been the simplest and most definitive way to label them.

These When posts are all about managing expectations, and part of that is looking at when we should start looking for rumors. If we expect referrals to begin arriving November 13th or 16th then we’d expect to begin seeing early rumors the week of November 2nd. If the third scenario happens then we’d expect to see early rumors begin sometime next week.

I have no rumors that give me an idea of which scenario is most likely. As usual, we just have to wait and see.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 8:42 am and is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.