Shouldice Hospital Limited
Summary/Abstract:
Shouldice is a private hospital founded by Dr. Earle Shouldice in Toronto in July 1945. The hospital started out as a six-room nursing home in downtown Toronto. As demand increased for hernia operations, he expanded the facilities to a capacity of 36-beds, which turned into a 89-bed facility after adding a large wing. Dr. Shouldice devised a method called the Shouldice method to increase the efficiency and the overall experience of the surgery and the post surgery recovery period. The hospital specializes on external hernia cases and will not treat internal hernia patients. The method proved to be a big success. In this case, we will analyze the process flow of the hospital, determine the bottlenecks and finally offer recommendations.
Background:
Dr. Earle Shouldice is a famous operator for his private method of hernia surgery. Unlike normal methods, his way allowed the patient to walk around right after the end of surgery, and move freely at the end of the day. When the number of patients he had increased, he decided to exploit this by founding his own hospital. He died in 1965, but his hospital continued to grow, and at the end of 1982, his hospital had 6850 operations per year.
Analysis:
Initially, the hospital sends out a medical questionnaire to figure out whether the patient has hernia. If the patient requires the operation, they were sent a confirmation card for the surgery. However, after initial examination at the hospital, some of the patients were found healthy, so they were also sent back. After the examination, an administrative personnel checks the insurance of the patient. Then, a nurse takes blood and urine samples from the pa ...