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Shouldice Hospital

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OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Case Analysis
Shouldice Hospital Limited
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SEP 29, 2009
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Q.1 What are the unique features of Shouldice’s services, as compared to that of a typical hospital?

Out of the two broad industrial sectors i.e., manufacturing and services, the Shouldice Hospital comes under service Industry. Services industry should have some strategic focuses on the basis of which we will compare Shouldice Hospital with a typical Hospital in US
1) Variety of services

Shouldice Hospital essentially is specialized in the repairing of only external type of abdominal hernia. The hospital is usually aware of the requirements well in advance as they get a form filled by the patient even before he comes to the hospital.

2) Procedure of Service

i) Shouldice Hospital follows an assembly line model. This strategy works only because there are relatively low variations and due to the standardization of the service - they operated only upon external type of hernias.

ii) In Shouldice method, the muscles were arranged in 3 layers and the opening was repaired by overlapping the margins. Other methods might not separate muscle layers and had fewer rows of sutures resulting in insertion of screens and meshes under the skin.

iii) Patients were not sedated in their rooms prior to being taken in the hospital rooms.

iv) The most important aspect of operation process was that the patients were encouraged to move around freely even right after the operation instead of being stuck up at the hospital bed.

3) Speed and convenience of service delivery

i) The recuperation time was significantly lower than that of other hospitals which required 2-8 weeks as compared to the 5-7 days at Shouldice Hospital.
ii) Shouldice’s general surgeon performed 600 or more operations per year as compared to 25-50 performed by a typical general surgeon.
4) Treatment of the customer
i) Shouldice provided high...