Q1) How successful is the Shouldice Hospital?

Shouldice has been a great success in the specialization it works upon of Hernia surgery. Below are
few pointers which account for its success:

 The demand for the operations is much more than the supply hospital is able to provide.
 The backlog of operations continues to increase no matter how much capacity is increased;
it was 1200 at this time of January.
 145 operations were performed per week on an average which tells us the scale it works
upon.
 140,000 highly satisfied Alumni are there who are very much happy to be connected with
hospital and also attend various reunions.
 Success can also be accounted as the competitor imitating the hernia operation method of
Shouldice.
 Also the hospital recorded only 0.8% reoccurrence rate of the cases.

Q2) How do you account for its performance?

Some of the key performance indicators for Shouldice Hospital are:

 Shouldice Hospital surgeons have repaired more than 300,000 hernias with greater than
99% success rate.
 There is no use of synthetic screens or meshes, except in rare cases, this improves the
recovery time.
 Majority of operations are done with light sedatives instead of general anaesthesia.
 The recovery time for a patient is very less and ranges between 3-4 days.
 The cost of operation was very less (almost half) including the stay of around $1100 as
compared to the average cost charged by other hospitals $2000-$3000.
 Reoccurrence rate is 0.8% only of the operations performed at Shouldice.
 Low nurse to patient ratio as nurses spend more time in consulting.
 Parents are allowed to stay for free with the kid which helps them getting the feel of home.

Q3) As Dr. Shouldice, what actions, if any, would you take to expand the hospital's capacity?
As the demand for the surgeries are very high, I would like to suggest some ways where the
capacity of hospital can be increased:

1. We can go for Saturday operations and increase our capacity by 20%

2. Another floor of rooms can be added to the hospital which increases the capacity of beds by
50%.
3. Looking out of Toronto/Canada, we can come up with another facility in USA where private
hospital operations are very common.
4. Diversification into other specializations at other facilities like eye surgery, haemorrhoids; is
also one of the ways to expand Shouldice.

Q4) How would you implement changes you propose?

1. Diversification and expansion requires reskilling of the current staff which can done by
regular training of the staff and specialist. It also requires hiring of new staff and specialist
so as to avoid overtime work which is the USP of Shouldice.
2.