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CASE FACTS
The medical facilities at Shouldice consist of 5 operating rooms, 1 patient recovery room,
1 laboratory and 6 six examination rooms.
Shouldice performs, on average, 150 operations per week, with patients generally staying
at the hospital for three days.
The nurse to patient ratio is 1:15 while the industry standard being 1:4
12 full-time surgeons, 7 part-time assistant surgeons, 2 anaesthetists form the team
Operating team has 1 surgeon, 1 assistant surgeon, 1 scrub nurse & 1 circulating nurse
30-36 operations are performed per day with a surgeon handling 3-4 surgeries per day
The surgeons’ day ends at 4 P.M., although they can expect to be on call every 14th night
and every 10th weekend.
CASE QUESTIONS
1- What is the market for the service? How successful is Shouldice Hospital?
The target demographic comprises of mostly males as they are more prone to a hernia.
Moreover, It is ensured that the complex cases are refused for operations
In a year, almost 1,000,000 operations were performed in US in 2000. So, it was a
lucrative market to grab a considerable market share
Shouldice Hospital performance in year 2004 –
Number of operating days- 365-52*2= 261 with 30-36 operations per day
Backlog operations- 2400 with 200 backlog operations increasing every year
$ 320 per day or $1280 for 4 days ; Surgical fee -$650 ; General anesthesia fee - $300
(20% cases); Travel fare -$200-$600
Total costs- $2430 - $2830 (comparison value - $5240), 45.99% - 53.6% lesser cost
2- Define the service model of Shouldice. How does each of its elements
contribute to the hospital's success?
Shouldice Hospital comprised of the following key elements in its service model to perform
Hernia operations-
Customers: Diagnosis by mail was performed
Service: Shouldice Method was stringently applied, and only external abdominal hernias
were performed
Facility: Mixed canteen, all carpet flooring, multiple operating rooms facilitated the
whole process
Hospital Capacity:
Alternatives available-
Violates the implied contract that Shouldice has with its surgeons,
strong opposition by the senior doctors
Disadvantages: Require to schedule doctors to the full capacity of 5 days per week
Recommendation
It is crucial to decide your target segment and the type of service you want to provide
Word of mouth is a big contributor when it comes to advertisement and needs the least
amount of investment. Ensuring a good word of mouth is all one needs to increase
awareness about his services.
Giving the best service to your customers can also be ensured by having customer
participation in the service itself. It reduces cost and increases customer satisfaction
In the case of expanding your service infrastructure, it should be ensured that current
offerings aren’t diluted in the process. A lost customer is a big threat to the future of any
service provider