Use of quantitative approaches in plan development.

Health Planning as mandated by P.L. 93-641 requires considerable emphasis on technical procedures, especially during the development of the 5 year Health Systems Plans (HSP) and the one year Annual Implementation Plans (AIP). In addition, the State Health Plans and the State Medical Facilities Plans, which are to be developed in part on the basis of HSPs and AIPs of the Health Systems Agencies (HSAs) in each state, are expected to have solid quantitative documentation. The gap between these expectations and the state of the art reality are reviewed in this article.