Project 2 - Monthly Patient Visits

Introduction

In this project, I will analyze monthly patient visits across 10 community health clinics during 2025.

The original dataset is in wide format, where each clinic has one row and monthly patient visit counts are stored in separate columns. I will use R to transform the dataset into tidy format and then analyze how patient visits vary across clinics and months.

The goal of this project is to practice data tidying and transformation while exploring patterns in patient visits.

Original Dataset: https://brightspace.cuny.edu/d2l/le/1404182/discussions/threads/5822251/View

Planned Approach

First, I will import the CSV file into R and examine its structure to understand how the data is organized.

Next, I will use pivot_longer() from the tidyr package to transform the dataset from wide to long format. I will also rename the columns to make them easier to understand.

After tidying the data, I will check for missing values and data consistency. I will also identify the minimum and maximum monthly patient visits for each clinic and calculate summary statistics, including the mean, median, and standard deviation.

Finally, I will calculate total patient visits by clinic and by month. I will use a bar chart to compare clinics and a line chart to examine monthly changes throughout 2025.

Anticipated Challenges

One possible challenge is transforming the monthly columns into a single month column while keeping the correct clinic names and patient visit counts.

Another challenge is making sure that the months appear in chronological order rather than alphabetical order, especially in the monthly visualization.