1. Model Shouldice Hospital as a processing operation with products, attributes, and resources.
A. Process Structure:
a. Input: Approved patient entering the clinic the day before operation
b. Output: Successful patient leaving the facility
c. Flow Unit: The patient going through the surgery process
d. Network of activities and buffers (not sure?): The whole process with its wait times. Waiting room (20min wait time), examination (15-20min), waiting room for accounting office (5-15min), accounting office (10min), nurse station for blood check (5-10min), surgery (45min), recovery (3days)
B. Product:
a. This hospital can be characterized as a service sector as the tangible product is its patient coupled with its intangible product
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In addition, a very friendly staff (as the Hospital cares about its employees) means happy patients.
C. Recovery Time: Shouldice patient can return to less strenuous work in a week or 4 weeks if strenuous vs. hospital patients return to less strenuous work in two weeks or 8 weeks if strenuous work.
D. Surgeon Selection: In addition to education and work experience, Shouldice looks for insight on the surgeon’s domestic situation and personal interests. Furthermore, Shouldice looks for surgeons who do what they are told vs trying to do it their way.
E. Low Recurrence: Shouldice recurrence rate of 0.8% is very low compared to the United States recurrence rate of 10%.
3. What kind of market has it chosen to focus on?
a. The Shouldice Hospital focuses on a very specializing service: external abdominal hernia operations. In 1982, 82% of the procedures conducted were on first time patients. The rest involved patients operated somewhere else suffering from a recurrence. Furthermore, the hospital requires the patient to not be overweight.
4. How does its operations strategy support its business strategy?
5. We use Shouldice first as an application of the process view. Discuss its strategic
The better they feel, the more they can enjoy life, making life more pleasurable for both them and for the staff.
To impact healthcare in patient delivery, employees must focus on staying happy with their jobs to have more positivity about the outcomes. Examples include: longevity of employment, increased employee satisfaction, better safety and healthcare, greater patient satisfaction, shorter lengths of stay. Therefore; employees who are satisfied with their career and job setting will show more positive outcomes towards patient care.
After analyzing this information and reading through the case thoroughly, it would be quite difficult for Shouldice to perform 45 operations a day. They have limitations due to their operating rooms and the number of surgeons at their facility. According to the case, they have 12 full-time surgeons and only 5 operating rooms. Each surgeon operates on 4 patients per day so at most, the 12 surgeons can perform 48 total operations on a daily basis. Additionally, each operation takes 1 hour and since they only have 5 operating rooms, the maximum number of operations they can perform is 5 operations per hour. Operation time
In the healthcare industry, services provided by the healthcare staff are converted mainly by the inputs such as: Doctors, nurses, hospitals, medical supplies, equipment and laboratories. The processing involved in the healthcare industry includes: examination, surgery, monitoring, medication, and therapy. The output of the mentioned process would of course be healthy patients (Operations Management, 2004, p.6). Healthcare workers have a higher degree of customer contacts, for the customers are our patients that we provide comprehensive care to. Services, such as providing healthcare have a variable amount of inputs for a specific case. For instance, a critical care patient may need several nurses that need to attend to all of the needs for that patients, whereas, a telemetry patient may only need one nurse to provide care for. The measurement of productivity in healthcare services is also more difficult than the manufacturing of goods. In healthcare, it is rather difficult to measure the productivity of healthcare providers because healthcare is not quantitative. Less inventory is needed on hand in providing services (Operations Management, 2004, p.6 & 7). The scope of operations management in healthcare requires several different activities performed. Forecasting in healthcare may include ordering sufficient amounts of flu vaccines half a year ahead of time
The employees are friendly, a culture instilled upon them once they got to work for the firm (Stern & Ander, 2008).
Since 1945, Canada based Shouldice Hospital has gained a reputation around the world for their primary performed surgeries and services in hernia repair. Shouldice’s main objective is to take the inconvenience of being diagnosed with a hernia and turn it into a quick and even enjoyable experience for their patients. This is all possible through Shouldice’s service delivery system, consisting of selecting patients that do not hold an overly complicated hernia in order to perform a superior surgical technique established by Dr. Shouldice. The patients endure an active stay to ensure a proper, speedy recovery, and a quaint estate resembling a country club accompanied with a pleasant staff and encouraged socializing with other patients that give them a unique experience. After the patient's stay, Shouldice Hospital invites them back for a yearly gala Hernia Reunion dinner to follow up and provide a complimentary hernia inspection. The lifelong bond that Shouldice has been able to establish and maintain display the above and beyond service they’ve given their clientele for decades.
To understand workplace positivity it is essential to recognize that customer service along with job satisfaction will result in pride. Healthcare is a service that customers pay for. Therefore they deserve great customer service, especially when it comes to health. Focusing on service can help the job feel more rewarding and even provide or renew a sense of pride in
B. Experiment with new ways of carrying out a function: Incorporate Time-Out into Electronic Medical Records (EMR).
This is the most important aspect to help determine the managerial strategy to use, because it help ask two questions to determine
This paper seeks to review the five phases and other key elements and outcome expectations with the purpose of providing clarity to the organizational focus. It then demonstrates some of the implications and accomplishments
The decision making process can also be divided into seven steps, where the first step will basically involve defining the problem. These steps allow for the main issue to be identified, and therefore the manager should make sure that it has been done correctly. After the problem identification stage, we can move forward and identify the limiting factors, and in this the manager should make use of all resources available to do it the best way. Some of the resources include information, time, personnel, equipment and supplies. Using this, managers can be able to identify the factors that might hinder them from achieving their goals.
Shouldice Hospital focus on hernia repair surgery which is mostly performed on males. Shouldice operation strategy
The best alternative from the above is to adopt the strategy of focusing on the process (1st alternative). This can be achieved by the proposed care path. Most of the operational issues under Key issues
A Canadian hospital specializing in hernia operations is considering whether and how to expand the reach of its seraices,
They even have very well maintained and clean doctor chambers and patient’s wards with all the necessary facilities.