QUESTIONS
Exhibit 4.7 is a room-occupancy table for the existing system. Each row in the table follows the patients that checked in on a given day.
The columns indicate the number of patients in the hospital on a given day. For example, the first row of the table shows that 30 people checked in on Monday and were in the hospital for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
By summing the columns of the table for Wednesday, we see that there are 90 patients staying in the hospital that day.
1 How well is the hospital currently utilizing its beds?
2 Develop a similar table to show the effects of adding opera-tions on Saturday. (Assume that 30 operations would still be performed each day.) How would this affect the utilization of the bed capacity? Is this capacity sufficient for the additional patients?
3 Now look at the effect of increasing the number of beds by 50 percent. How many operations could the hospital perform per day before running out of bed capacity? (Assume opera-tions are performed five days per week, with the same number performed on each day.)
How well would the new resources be utilized relative to the current operation? Could the hospital really perform this many operations? Why?
(Hint: Look at the capacity of the 12 surgeons and the five operating rooms.)
4 Although financial data are sketchy, an estimate from a con-struction company indicates that adding bed capacity would cost about $100,000 per bed. In addition, the rate charged for the hernia surgery varies between about $900 and $2,000 (U.S. dollars), with an average rate of $1,300 per operation.
The surgeons are paid a flat $600 per operation. Due to all the uncertainties in government health care legislation. Shouldice would like to justify any expansion within a five-year time period.
Attachment:- Case.rar