Question

Suppose that Shouldice Hospital has 90 beds and 5 operating rooms. Each operation takes 1 hour, and the operating room can be used only for 8 hours per day from Monday to Friday, and it cannot be used on weekends (unless specified otherwise). Furthermore, each doctor can perform up to 4 surgeries a day. Assume that there is sufficient capacity for assistant doctors (i.e., assistant doctors are not bottlenecks). Show your work.

What is the capacity rate of all operating rooms (not just a single operating room) per day?    (Provide your answer without any unit.)

Answer 1

Ans. 5 operating rooms used at 8 hours per day for 5 days a week i.e. Mon to Fri. Therefore 5X8X5 =200 operations can be performed since each operation takes 1 hour time and each doctor can perform 4 surgeries given just 2 doctors can do the operations, also assistant doctors are sufficient.

Now the bed capacity is 90 in 2 days 2X5X8 =80 operations will be performed

In 2 days and 1/4th day, 90 operations will be performed and hence 90 beds will be occupied completely.

Hence, with given resources, a patient can be admitted for a maximum 2 days and 6 hours given the full capacity has to be utilized excluding weekends.

The potential is including weekends => 7X8X5 operations =280 operations.

Thus the capacity rate is 200/280 = 0.71 or 71%