Shouldice Hospital, Ltd. Case

Starting as a small infirmary, the Shouldice infirmary has had a rather long history since the block up of the Second World War. And At the time of his death in 1965, the interrupt Dr. Shouldices longtime associate, Dr. Nicholas Obney was named surgeon-in-chief and chairman of the board of Shouldice hospital Limited and on a petty(a)er floor his leadership, the volume of military action continued to increase, reaching a total of 6,850 trading operations in the 1982 calendar year. And primaries represented approximately 82% of all hernias operations performed at Shouldice in 1982.It has been very successful. And now it tries to meet deals needs and authorize this as total a place to choke as possible. It has been a comfortable place for patients to stay. During their stay, patients were encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity to explore the premises and make naked as a jaybird friends. Also, it has been a skillful place for doctors who teach each other, encou rage a group effort, vex regular working hours and own desirable salary. Furthermore, the installing and administration here(predicate) is very humanized for both patients and module.As a result, patients are attracted to the hospital by its fairish rates. Shouldice hospital has specialized in hernia performance (the Shouldice method) and is able to declare oneself patients with low risk, low recurrence, and peace of mind. Shouldice achieves outstanding results as a low price and at high profit because everything do by the hospital is designed to maximize the difference between perceived quality and the honour of the service provided to the patients on one hand and the cost of providing the service on the other. They do this by carefully screening patients.Patients are active participants in the service delivery process as presented with the utensils to prep themselves for mathematical operation. The avoidance of full general anesthetics allows a wide range of involvement of patients. The staff is freed from much of the abrasive workload due to part-time positions. The cost of housekeeping, laundry, and food is also minimized. The clinic structures hospital jobs that involve more counseling and positive interaction with the patients. Shouldice Hospital is assorted from other hospitals in that Patients do not feel that they are staying in a hospital.It is Shouldices intentions to make its patients feel as if they are winning a vacation. When patients arrive to the clinic, typi scruby they join up with 30 to 34 other patients and their friends and families in the waiting room. Patients with similar jobs, backgrounds, or interests are charge to the same room to encourage the patients establish relationships and become more comfortable. The facility is also designed so that patients exact to interact and walk around. thither are no televisions are telephones in the patients rooms.This gives the patients the opportunity to tour the facility, catch each others rooms, lounging in the Florida room, and making use of the coruscation recreational facilities. Shouldice Hospital uses a focus strategy. The Hospitals commercialize focus is on a narrow segment of potential patients who have a hernia and the patients are predominantly male, older in age, and essentially in good health. The hospital has knowledge of the large target market, as there were 600,000 such operations in the United States in 1979. Shouldice uses an inwrought market strategy.Shouldices doctors are dedicated to quality of the Shouldice method. The doctors are after(prenominal) several years at Shouldice must decide if this is something they want to do for the rest of their lives because eventually they pass on lose touch with other checkup disciplines. Few elect to leave. Nurses at the facility are people orientated and work to assist patients as well as they can. The Staff is compromising and team oriented. Shouldice implements a sharing policy where th e employees are paid a part of the profit in addition to their fixed salaries.This sharing is done based on their contribution towards the success of the firm. This entices them to work impregnable and compose in more efforts. From the management point of view, they have given their staff a lesser work load and weekends off. This makes it able for the staff to communicate more time with their families and keeps them content with their jobs. After discussion, our group has four counselions for Shouldice Hospital in terms of their problem. First, author mentions that there are some people realize that they dont have hernias when they talk to doctor in hospital.Therefore, hospital can increase its capacity by reduce this sympathetic of error. Our group suggests that hospital should improve its questionnaire to make sure consumer can on the whole understand the questions. If there are some uncertainties in the questionnaire, nurses or doctors should call individual to make sure he /she has certain external types of abdominal hernias. Secondly, we think that Shouldice Hospital should not operate on Saturday. Even by dint of Saturday operation can increase capacity by 20%, it is hard to control the operation quality. As ODell said On the other hand, Im oncerned about this talk of Saturday operations. We are already getting good utilization of this facility. And if we expand further, it will be very difficult to prevail the same kind of working relationships and attitudes. Already there are rumors locomote around among the staff about it. And the staff is not pleased. Right now, Shouldice hospital is much more efficient and effective than other hospital. We believe they make excellent utilization of their resource. Therefore, Saturday operation may cause some choke on hospitals capacity which will jeopardize the authentic process flow.Thirdly, we believe that offers similar opportunities such as eye surgery is not a good idea. The reason is that the busin ess bottleneck of Shouldice Hospital is the capacity of process rather than the demand in market. So, they should focus on how to improve the capacity to service more patients. Moreover, offering other surgery may harm their professional image in hernias area. Hence, our group suggests that they simply stay on the hernias field and try to extent capacity. Fourth, we strongly suggest that Shouldice Hospital should build another hospital in the United States.Nowadays, 42% of their patients are come from the United States. Round-trip fares for travel to Toronto from various major cities in the North American continent ranged from roughly $200 to $600, as equation that the total operation fee including hospital is just around $1000. So the travel cost becomes a big financial burden for patients. Hence, blunt a new hospital in American will dramatically reduce the travel cost for customers and expand business. There are dickens big issue concerns with the new hospital, where to open and how to operate.Our group proposes that Shouldice Hospital should trade a marketing research to find out where their current American patient come from and the transportation for some big city in United States to decide where to invest new hospital. About the operation of new hospital, quality control is the most important issue to maintain our disfigurement reputation. They should relocate some experienced doctor from Toronto to American to train and run the local doctor. Moreover, they should utilize the successful process flow into the new hospital and make some change by considering the difference culture and condition.Finally, Shouldice Hospital should be marketing their service, while the main strategy of marketing is to elucidate where is hospital and what kind of operation is truly theirs. Because there are more individuals or institution on the market want to attract customers by using our brand image. But, the quality of their service is not very good. This phenome non will jeopardize our brand image and destroy our reputation. It is the responsibility of hospital to help people distinguish the fake one. Our group believes that some marketing activity will well-build hospitals brand image and help them success in the long-term.