How to do simple Trend Analysis?

[Bostaevski]

Is there such a thing?

Hi,

This question has nothing to do with poker or gambling but since I know there are alot of statistics gurus here I humbly ask for help.

Background:
I work for an Organ Procurement Organization. We are responsible for coordinating organ donation from deceased donors. From any given donor we are able to procure between 0 and 7 organs with the majority being 3 to 4. One of our key performance indicators is to measure how many organs are transplanted per donor over some given time period. Typically, we look at this figure monthly and also compare by Calendar Year.

Concurrent with a new Director of Hospital Services coming on board, we have noticed an upward trend in our Organs Transplanted Per Donor (OTPD).

For instance in the years 2005, 2006, and YTD 2007 our OTPD has gone 2.93, 2.92, 3.52.

We have approximately 150 donors per year.

The Task:
I need to see if there is a way to do some kind of trend analysis on this data. We would like to try and figure out what are the odds this is an anomaly? How likely is it that we will be able to sustain this OTPD rate? The CEO is going before the Board in a few weeks and she wants to be able to say something like "We are 95% confident that we will hit our goal of 3.50 OTPD this year". Obviously I need to provide her with the analysis to back up her claim.

The Problem:
I have no idea how, nor do I know if this is even really possible [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] I feel like I need more than some Excel chart where I add a trend line. I have thought about doing histograms, bell curves, etc, but I do not see how I can use those when looking at trends over time(?). It would be great if this type analysis can be done in Excel 2007. I also have this software called "SPSS 15.0 Family". I have never used it and do not know if it provides anything that can't already be done with Excel.

I also have a book: Elementary Statistics: A Step by Step Approach (6th Ed.) by Allan G. Bluman. There's alot of stuff in it but nothing that really sounds like what I am looking for.

Can anyone help me out?